helenjp

A couple of times I've trolled around for information on the Slow Food movement in Japan. I used to find mostly European dishes, but now there are almost too many groups out there cooking up traditional Japanese food. Here's one of the best -- this link takes you right to their database of traditional Yamagata foods. In Japanese -- sorry about that, because some of it looks great!

I remember reading this in one of those super-obasan mags like Croissant. For green veg: 1) store in the direction they naturally grow in (why do they all need to be upright??? Why would I know a thing like that???) 2) Use a small knife to hollow out the core of cabbage or Chinese cabbage and then stuff the cavity with a wet paper towel, wrap the whole thing in newspaper. 3) Long onions, scallions etc keep best trimmed, cut in usable lengths, and in plastic bags. I can attest that this is so, but couldn't begin to say why a bag of chopped scallions keeps better than a cellophane pack of whole ones with roots... and just let me know if you ever find the secret of eternal cucumber life!

Jim, you're bringing tears to my eyes...there was a time when gewurztraminer was "the" variety in NZ, but I haven't had so much as the smell of a gewurz. cork for years. And Kahurangi to boot...it seems I'm going to have to supplement the wine notebook which I leave in NZ for my visits with another notebook to TAKE to NZ when I go next! The only "Downunder" wine on offer at my local this weekend was a very suspicious item under the brand-name Kangaroo Ridge.

After I wrecked my umpteenth corkscrew, a friend recommended an Adler corkscrew. Couldn't find a photo online, sorry. It looks a bit like a crossbow -- you screw it in, and the screw moves down into the cork and then lifts the cork up, without your having to change direction or do anything else but keep screwing away, so to speak. I've used the wing/rabbit ear type, but prefer this. The standard cheap corkscrew...I don't know how it happens, but usually the screw straightens out, and then one sad day I usually snap the whole thing off. Rather embarrassing to admit that my feminine mitts can deal such damage!

I remember reading somewhere about a Korean guy saying that the Koreans introduced chopsticks to Japan, but not spoons, and that this was an object lesson in only giving people what they needed, and not scattering your pearls before swine!! I'm not so sure that Chinese or Japanese or Korean chopsticks are intrinsically better -- I started with Chinese chopsticks, eating Chinese food at the Chinese grocery where I worked, and moved to Japanese chopsticks when I came here. At first, I found the Japanese chopsticks slippery and hard to handle; now I find the Chinese chopsticks hard to balance!

I'm not surprised...but I AM always surprised at the way the NZ wine industry jumps into every new trend gumboots first. Every time some new variety is labelled "it", it becomes impossible to find anything else on the average supermarket shelf. Sigh.

Yep, Australian and NZ producers are moving to screwtops for wines not intended to be cellared -- the idea is that they protect a wine for 2-3 years better than a poor quality cork would. When I visit NZ, I don't particularly want to travel with my "take down buildings in one stroke" corkscrew, so I hunt out screwtops. Villa Maria is a large producer who put effort into producing good quality and consistent wines for the dinner table -- you can find wine from them which is not cheap and nasty, and they win a fair number of awards. Kim Hill is a smaller and more recent maker, with some excellent wines. Unless they are dirt cheap, I think a screwtop wine from NZ or Australia has a good chance of coming from a winery which takes technology seriously -- I'm sorry that I don't recall which other wineries use a lot of screwtops.

My kids are not as young as therdogg's, but I need plenty of energy to get through the day teaching and running round after kids and elderly parents in law -- and still face translation work at night. A friend put me on to Sugarbusters, saying that it helped her with energy and mood problems as well as weight loss. I have been very lackadaisical the last few months, but I lost 40lbs the first 6-8 months. I've kept it off, and I want to lose a bit more. The book is not very clear, and you could drive a truck through the inconsistencies here and there, especially as they've tried to please all nutritional camps...but the basic premise seems to be adequate protein, moderate fat, and whole food starches such as whole wheat or sweet potatoes in modest amounts. The only no-nos are sugar (which is allowed in small amounts in the latest edition of the book), a few high-sugar fruits, and the most easily digested starches, such as potatoes or white flour products -- starch content of vegetables is offset by their higher fiber content and longer digestion time, especially if not overcooked. Because I've been eating from all food groups from the start, I've had to work out a balance that works for me -- what daily foods will allow me to lose weight, what will maintain my weight, etc. I've never had to buy anything I couldn't get at the local supermarket, or cook a separate meal for myself and my family. I've had heaps of energy and much better health all around. There are online groups to help keep you on track, and some people combine this with Weight Watchers for better self-management -- they just choose whole food, low sugar options. Sugarbusters requires some thought in the initial stages (now it's just habit for me), and is easiest for people who like to cook. If you don't read the book carefully or check online, you could end up eating like Atkins plus wholewheat bread, but that's not what the book says!...REgarding the TMI post further up, I've never had those problems on Sugarbusters, because of the whole grains and ample fruit and veg.

We've been making our own yogurt for about 10 years now, and tried various methods. The current (and easiest) is to use a warmer box that takes one carton of milk, as is. I assume that there are similar things in the US. I like this because I don't have to transfer milk or finished yogurt from one container to the other. All I have to do is spoon in some of the previous batch of yogurt, put the lid on the carton (recloses the opened carton), close the warmer lid, plug in, and go away for 10-12 hours. Then I take the carton out and put it in the fridge. Done.

I've made miso several times, and I think the reason that small amounts go off is that miso doesn't like being exposed to air...my big batch keeps well, but the very top layer doesn't taste as good (also, Tokyo is a bit warm most winteres for miso making). I think the packaging process probably does that anyway, so a commercial package is not a stable preserve anymore. Real white miso (not just pale miso) seems to have all sorts of different ingredients, and I've always heard it doesn't last long, but I don't see why you shouldn't freeze it in cubes.

Kris, you can persuade your family to eat liver? I have to save it for lunches when my elder son and I are the only ones home... We had younger son's birthday dinner today...his requests were: okowa (sticky rice, in this case cooked with a little black sticky rice in place of red beans) miso soup with tofu and wakame sweet potato simmered with yuzu (citron) and a little mirin (sweet sake) and served with shreds of yuzu peel spinach dressed with ground black sesame seed Beef (we found some NZ grass-fed beef while buying lamb for Mongolian noodles!) cooked Korean barbeque style. Birthday cake postponed so he can have it at a weekend party with his best friend, who has the same birthday...and everybody too sick with fevers too eat much anyway. How did Mia's mumps affect her birthday?

I like satsuma-imo too...but I like to soak it first so that it cooks up bright yellow. I know this is a secondary issue, but just can't help myself. I think satsuma-imo go particularly well with green beans and a little shredded ginger..sigh. SOunds so good in my cold, cold office!

Thanks for the read! After being away from NZ nearly 15 years, there are an unbelievable number of unfamiliar names. I'll enjoy looking out for some of the producers you mentioned when next in NZ. Kiwis being what they are, they would rather go broke making 10 bottles of wine than join up with the bloke along the road and produce 25 bottles. Consequently it's not much easier to get hold of wine from small producers when in NZ than it is overseas...but I enjoy all the other stuff I find along the way!

This is certainly the right season to experiment with making miso soup! I see that South River also stock "The Book of Miso" by Shurtleff and Aoyagi. It contains information which is hard to find even from Japanese sources, as well as quick and practical recipes for cuppa-soup style miso soups and more elaborate dishes. There is also a list of seasonal choices of things to put in the soup. Any favorites? I like asparagus and fried tofu. Potato and wakame or scallions. Green beans and chunks of omelet... Using shellfish usually means that you don't need to use dashi, just water, as the shellfish have so much flavor of their own.

Goulash? American Chop Suey? This sounds familiar... My mother liked to cook meat dishes, she wasn't interested in fancy baking, and she didn't care for vegetables. In the vegetable rack were withered carrots and parsnips that could be tied in knots, forest-topped potatoes, and half-rotten onions, were not garbage but food. They were just waiting till Friday night, when my Dad worked late and ate dinner at his shop, and then delivered medicine on his way home, stopping to change lightbulbs, open jar lids and other stuff for elderly customers on the way home. On Thursday, she would ring the butcher with the week's meat order, including the Sunday roast. The first item to be used would be the "mince" (ground beef), which would be browned with the salvaged parts of the onions, and minimal amounts of chopped carrots, parsnips, and potatoes (there's an art to peeling wrinkled carrots...). Frozen peas, definitely. A LOT of water was added, and as far as I recall, the seasonings were salt and pepper. The "mixed herbs" packet may have been involvd, but the overall color was gray! Occasionally served with plain dumplings. I think she must have felt guilty about spending money on the Sunday roast, because the only other hard-to-eat dish she made regularly was the Sunday night soup...it was a sad day for us when she bought a food processor, and learned that it would reduce almost any plant matter to a mass of watery fiber. Broccoli stems and asparagus stems were particularly open to abuse, until somebody accused her of accidentally adding the chopping board to the mix. She loved to entertain though, and never stinted on ingredients, time, or quantity if guests were at the table.

I agree about the yogurt and water (or milk) sub for buttermilk. I can't buy buttermilk in Japan, so that is what I use all the time. Even a teaspoon of vinegar per cup of milk is better than straight milk.

I used to buy fresh turmeric in New Zealand from shops for Fijian Indian immigrants. I don't know what they used it for, but I had a recipe for fish grilled or simmered (can't remember where from or the details now, because it is so long since I've been able to buy the turmeric) in a paste which was mostly grated fresh turmeric. It had an aroma that I was addicted to, and I would eat hapuku or kingfish steak with fresh turmeric, and a nice side of snake beans, every day of the week if I could get my hands on it! Trying to remember more, because the local vege grower has started selling fresh turmeric as a herb, along with his lavender. Japanese people slice fresh turmeric, dry it, and make it into tea for an "as seen on TV" cure-all which has been popular here for a few years. It's also popular for dyeing here. For some reason using medicinal herbs to dye things gives an added panache...

Laundry poles...yep, I perceive the demand, but every day??? When I first came to Japan 25 years ago, I went to visit friends who lived halfway up a mountain, considerably past the end of the last car-bearing road. They enjoyed watching all the sound trucks going past on the roads further down the mountain, touting services that nobody in the country needs...laundry poles? Cut 'em down from behind the house. Collection of unwanted bikes, machinery etc? But everybody knows they have to rust for 20 years in an outhouse first... Finally they made up their own chant to deal with the real rural surplus: Boro-jiisan, boro-baasan, gofuyou to narimashita okusama, ugokanakunatta furui dannasama, gozaimashitara, koukyuu toiretto tissue to koukan itashimasu... (We will take worn-out grandaddies and grannies, unwanted wives, non-functioning elderly husbands, in exchange for quality toilet tissue...) For years I used to remember this simple ditty at inopportune moments and laugh helplessly to myself, while everybody else on the train inched cautiously away from me...

Oh yeah, we have a traveling bakery too! He doesn't sell any grainy breads, and comes in the evening after closing his bakery, but luckily for lazy me, he also sells milk! His set up is almost identical to Kristin's photo. We don't have a fish or tofu truck run nearby, unfortunately, but every so often a very old lady comes puffing up our steps to invite us to check out the family vege truck parked round the corner. This is not as well stocked as the usual vege truck, and is obviously limited to the 2-3 varieties they grow themselves, but cheap.

My husband is off on business too, leaving me free not to cook rice!!! But on the way home from work, I dropped in at the fish shop, and they had some wonderful saba, the type called goma-saba (a type of mackerel), which for some reason is pooh-poohed here (softer flesh??) . So then I had to cook rice to go well with the strong tasting mackerel. I pulled the mackerel into fillets, rubbed it liberally with mustard and put it in the oven sprinkled with ...er...stuff. Parsley and scallions, was it? For some reason, the mustard and the mackerel were perfect together. Served with chingensai cooked over a dangerously high flame and some tiny shiitake (they go for 60 yen per hundred grams at our local grower), white rice, and a snapper head miso soup. One giant, fresh, delectable snapper head for 350 yen. And Jinmyo, if you have supplies of snake beans, and actually get to cook and EAT them, could you either provide photos or just warn people not to read that part?! My garden is so shady that I have not been able to grow them since I moved here, though I try and sigh every year or so. I think that apart from really tiny runner beans, they are the tenderest and best green bean there is...

Thanks everybody for the interesting reading! I have (somewhere) the recipe books of my grandmother and her legion sisters. It took me a while to realize that they were not just "family cooking" but typical Edwardian food. Gotta drag them out... My mother had one of those Betty Crocker books -- in New Zealand, it took some getting, and some of the dishes (exactly the same type of thing as the "figgy pudding with foamy sauce" recipe) wowed the neighbors! Cinnamon fluff with clear lemon sauce...what! a sweet dessert with a sweet sauce?! My mother discovered European yeast baking through Betty Crocker -- New Zealand yeast cookery is strictly Brit. My two faves -- a reprint 18th century book I bought for my mother (who threw it out some years later) which contained recipes for things like cock ale -- pound up the raw cock until the bones are broken and the blood runs, add ale, and ferment...or something similar. That was certainly a change from the London coffee-house image! And the second, a book on New Orleans cookery by Lafcadio Hearn, who was on the bones of his knees at the time and hit upon the idea of publishing the recipes of his boarding-house housekeeper. However, he seems to have been genuinely interested in the idea of good homely cooking. He went from there to Japan, where he spent the rest of his life, changing his name to Koizumi Yakumo, and gaining fame for a collection of stories based on the kind of grotesque folktales that were then being discarded by Japan's literary set as old-fashioned and ludicrously parochial. The recipes are the more interesting because they belong so strongly to their period.

I also avoid buying shrimp/prawn. I haven't checked in recent years, but I've more than once eaten shrimp that tasted strongly of bleach (not in Japan though), and in Japan I have frequently read that farmed shrimp are raised in water which is permanently laced with antibiotics. Of course, Japan has it's own reasons for passing on information about imported food safety, but cheap shrimp is cheap for a reason...

Tender pastry goods...do you think it has something to do with Japanese flour? The average flour here has less gluten than US flour, I believe. I find that British and New Zealand recipes work fine with Japanese flour, and was surprised to find that American cooks here often use part or all Japanese bread flour for US cake or cookie recipes. My husband's company had a huge row over baumkuchen last month. The company has vague ties with Germany, and every Christmas, the boss gives all staff-members a baumkuchen ordered from another well-known Konditorei here. This year, the designated deputy was sent off to order 50 baumkuchen, "you know, those ring things"...and on Christmas Eve, 50 glazed ring cakes were delivered. There were yells and yelps from behind the boss' door. Urgent phone calls were made. A general staff meeting was called, and the Fuhrerin (?) denounced her betrayer, and prepared everybody to bow their heads to the inevitable, etc. We came out of it quite nicely, though...several people, hearing that the ring butter-cakes wouldn't keep as well as a baumkuchen, pressed theirs on my husband, knowing we have sons and a resident brother-in-law with a good appetite. It took my husband several nights to ferry them home in his backpack, and me several days to distribute the largesse around the neighborhood!

Smallworld, those sound interesting! I recall having iwashi (fresh sardine) gyoza and liking them...and I've made scrambled egg and nira (chinese chives) filling and that was good too. The worst restaurant gyoza I've ever encountered was the "Giant Gyoza"...featuring large amounts of ITO KONNYAKU in the filling. Those devil's tongue root noodles were tough and impossible to bite through, and they had toughened the meat in the filling too. DH and I glared at the sign reading "We take pride in our famous Giant Gyoza" -- and chewed - and chewed - and chewed. Dessert gyoza...I recall reading about banana harumaki, but dessert gyoza deserves some thinking about!

Specialized cuisines and family cooking just aren't about the same thing. Room for all, isn't there? But...I don't want to rush into assuming that everybody does cook with lots of prepared items. And I especially don't want to assume that everybody who doesn't is a snob. Shortcuts -- sure, everybody has those, and everybody's idea of how to cut corners is different. I would rather make a pizza base than get out the car, head to the supermarket, troll the aisles, line up at the cash register, etc., etc. That isn't snobbism, that's choosing where to be lazy! I actually think it is snobbism to assume that everybody cooks the same way, and that anybody who can't own up to rows of Hamburger Helper packets in the pantry is eitiher either lying or incredibly up him/herself. There's a whole world out there where packets of Hamburger Helper have never been seen...(and now I'm off to see if I can find a picture of what this stuff looks like, and to actually do some of the work that the packets and cans I DO buy are supposed to facilitate!)