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Yup, the rice starch really works. It adds one step to the cooking process, but the family will eat an entire daikon cooked that way -- without the precooking, the daikon tends to become a left-over! We have a vege stand over the road, an elderly man sells his own produce, which becomes increasingly variable the older he gets! I'm curious about exactly why the rice starch works, and it might be worth seeing what happens if you use the water potatoes have been boiled in, or throw in a small handful of flour, etc.

Bitter turnips...happens with daikon too. The method which produced the bitterest turnips for me was grilling them and then simmering them. I confidently expected that this would NOT make them bitter. That confidence was bitterly betrayed. Daikon are normally parboiled with a handful of rice (or in the rinse-water from washing rice) before simmering in flavored stock. This does produce an excellent flavor -- might be overkill on small turnips though.

You can even "roast" a chicken in a crockpot. I don't have one in Japan, but I REALLY liked the results when I tried it in NZ. No water...just crockpot plus chicken. Well maybe some salt, eh?

I made a cocoa genoise and filled it with a strawberry and white chocolate ganache, outside coated with a dark chocolate ganache. I was surprised to find that about a billion other people had come up with this unremarkable idea too... In retrospect, I think there may be something to be said for a softer filling. Possibly because our house is so dreadfully cold, by the next day the two ganaches were a little harder than I wanted them to be. The cake was fine on the day, though. Next year I may go back to a strawberry mousse filling -- it HAS to be strawberry, because the traditional Japanese Christmas Cake is a strawberry shortcake, and only so much leeway is permitted me! The genoise wasn't dry, because I used the cocoa/boiling water method from Rose Levy Berenbaum. This is the best way I know to make a chocolate cake which is intense in flavor and keeps well, but I had not thought of applying that to a genoise

Scones...my grandmother and mother both made good scones, but quite different. My grandmother used the traditional technique -- rub or cut the butter into the dry ingredients, add milk, and mix lightly with the fingers, then knead with 3-5 strokes -- she maintained it needed that tiny amount of needing to develop the gluten a little. Her scones were light and dry. My mother's scones were fluffy and moist - she used a melt'n'mix method -- melted the butter into the milk, and mixed with a few turns of the spoon into the dry ingredients. You have to have the oven preheated before you start to mix these, or the warm milk will have the baking powder activated long before the oven is ready. Both used around 3 tsp baking powder per imperial cup of flour. They used NZ plain flour, which would likely have less gluten than the harder wheat of Australia or Canada. In Japan I normally use medium or strong flour. If you think it is the flour and not the mixing method that produces dry scones, you might like to try one batch with strong bread flour and one with cake flour and see which you prefer. Both my mother and grandmother insisted that scones must be baked at the top of a very hot oven so that they do not dry out with long baking, and they must be kept close together on the oven tray, also to avoid drying.

GO TORAKRIS!!! Thanks for the extra shine your blog gave Christmas here in Japan, Jackal, and hope you get to that conference in Kyoto...and the food of western Japan does NOT begin and end with Kyoto's traditional dishes, either!

What a shattering experience...but I'm always a little comforted when I break a favorite dish, by the thought of how angry I would have been if anybody else had broken it! I've had plenty of examples of this tonight...Christmas dinner...one child waves his fizzy Chanmery around and then puts the full bottle down in midair, entire contents emptied over the kotatsu quilt...second child leaps up to grab a towel, trips, and lands with one hand, splat, in the middle of brother-in-law's serving of creamy Christmas cake... I'm beginning to understand why so many Japanese festive foods are rather hard and dry...

Merry Christmas! Our Christmas Day is almost over, yours no doubt in full swing! REALLY enjoyed seeing all the pix, especially of the breads...for Torakris and I it's like another world! I vote with those who think that collection of cheeses photos was just TOO pornographic! Good cheese and cheap fruit are two things that I will never stop missing in Japan. Santa gave our sons some tiny Babybel cheeses found in a Tokyo supermarket ... but Santa forgot to tell them not to eat the waxy coating. Santa was surprised to hear one son say that the wax tasted pretty good... Your Christmas Eve had everything covered -- the traditions, the tastes, the sounds. We started listening to boychoir music when one son was recommended to audition and have come to enjoy that astonishing sound. A small German boys' choir visited a couple of years ago and not only performed a nice range of songs, but also a small operatic spoof which had our singing son in stitches, and then they invited local kids up onto the stage with them -- a riot, and a reminder that boychoirs are full of...boys!

Pannetone looks yummy! The Spanish shop which hosts my son's classical guitar teacher imports some every year (there's Japanese multiculturalism for you), and we usually end up succumbing... What other treats (traditional or otherwise) do you cook for the Christmas season (not just for Christmas dinner)? ...and what are planning for Christmas Eve? I have never seen such a close-up of mistletoe before...very intriguing! I'm enjoying the blog, squirrels and other meats included, but wish you wouldn't mention exam setting when people are sitting at their computers trying to ignore unmarked papers, unset syllabi, uncalculated grades, etc.!

Yup. Kumquat = kinkan. Citron = yuzu. Sorry -- fever-addled brain short-circuiting improperly stored McInfo chunks! We're having a winter-only menu tonight, a kind of hybrid stamina/sickbed selection -- for those in the throes, a congee with grated lotus root and kuko-no-mi berries; for those recovering, yakiniku with fatty pork slices and a heap of Chinese cabbage.

Hmm...grilled buri (yellowtail) with a stack of finely grated daikon...kinkan (citrons - I actually like eating these whole as a way to wake up a sleepy winter afternoon)...oysters in nabe...dried persimmons...even dried sweet-potatoes occasionally...kids like those "pocket shiruko" that come as powdered bean jam in a wafer cup, break into a bowl and pour hot water over them. Next?

I'm curious...I know turkey has become more common in NZ at Christmas since the '80s...when do you think it started to make a serious stand on the UK Xmas table? In Japan, I'll be lucky to find a whole chicken small enough to fit in the oven...if not, there's always the frozen chicken legs that came from the 100-yen bin at the supermarket. Looking forward to following the blog.

Hmmm...I was hoping to make some stuff a week ahead of time -- in other words, combine the Big Christmas Cook-up with the Big New Year Cook-up, and concentrate (uncharacteristically) on cleaning in the lead-up to New Year. I just cleaned out my whole dry-foods storage area, so maybe the virtue of that will carry me through to the 31st... I think I'll go ahead and make the namasu, and see what it's endurance powers are! About kinton: I used to make one that included kiwifruit and canned Japanese cherries (which are not very sweet). It was nice, but didn't keep as well as the regular type. However, anzu sound as if they would keep well too... One thing I used to like was a "tomo-ai" of sato-imo (small taro-family root veges). I think it used peanut butter in the mashed sato-imo, with whole boiled (or maybe deep-fried??) sato-imo folded into it. Think I'll buy the datemaki this year...the boys are too young to remember me making it, and if never find out it can be made at home, so much the better! I've cooked a bunch of chicken breast chunks slowly in sake, with a few dried shiitake thrown in, and frozen both the chicken and the shiitake, for ozouni soup and for the nishime [mixed simmered veg).

When I worked in a Chinese grocery, we sold mainly peanut oil to Chinese families. New Zealanders preferred sunflower seed oil for deep frying. When I first came to Japan, the rule of thumb was "salad oil" (either soybean oil or a blend) for shallow frying and dressings, rapeseed oil (natane-abura) for deep-frying, with a little brown sesame oil added for flavor. Picky people used safflower (benibana-abura). Since then I've developed a soybean allergy. I use Canola for deep-frying, and Olive or sesame for most other purposes. I often wonder whether the occasional reports I hear that rapeseed is not good for us are hysteria or not. I can't find any specific evidence of why it should be bad to eat, but I keep my ears open...

Surprise, surprise, the latest issue of Orange Page has .... Ginger-glazed Meatballs in their easy osechi feature! My question: what osechi foods can safely be made ahead and frozen or fridged for at least 3 days before serving? I know I can freeze the sweet potato puree (kinton) and add the chestnuts when serving...how about namasu? Anybody think it will get too flabby if I make it way ahead of time and fridge it? Reckon datemaki has enough sugar in to freeze without turning the egg rubbery? My unsubtle plan is to actually do some cleaning as well as cooking this year, so a little foresight is called for!

Traditions eh... We usually go to a carol service on Christmas Eve, purely so that I can make myself grumpy thinking about how cold and dark it is here, and how nice and warm it would be back home in New Zealand! The Christmas trees there have a warm, summery, resin smell, not a sharp, camphory smell. Instead of listening to stretched tapes of Japanese versions of unfamiliar American Christmas songs at the supermarket, I would be being happily deafened by the Samoan choir doing the rounds of the neighborhood on their bus, 44-gallon kerosene can drums doing good service at every stop! When I was a kid, Santa not only ate Christmas cake (he always got the first piece) and drank ginger ale sitting out on the terrace, his reindeer left hoofprints all over the grass. When my parents moved out of their home into a small apartment, Dad reached up into the rafters of the basement, and brought down the small wooden "hoof" that he had carved many years before. My own family seems to have sprouted traditions too...the stockings *must* contain a roll of carton tape and a pineapple!

Yep, including the freebies, the neighborhood store may indeed work out cheaper than the supermarket. Ever since they razed the local shopping area and the approach to the temple to build a mall, we're rather short of owner-operated stores. I remember the fish shop where the owner used to get excited if there was a crowd, and end up giving everybody about twice as much fish as they'd actually ordered and paid for. He was passionate about his fish, and just couldn't bear to let his customers leave without KNOWING what other good stuff he had in stock. Pretty good business tactic though, because we always went to him for fish when catering for guests. ...and the vege shop where the owner's mother would beckon me aside and press cartons of quiveringly ripe tomatoes on me, saying "This would be wasted on anybody who can't cook, I'd just love you to have it"... The bread shop that would give my sons bags of crusts for me to bake up as snacks in the oven. The pickle shop that always lets my sons taste this and that to choose what to buy Dad to go with his Friday night beer...he's become such a familiar person that one son just had to stop by his shop on the way home from his guitar recital to play his favorite piece for the pickle shop man! But, I notice that in Japan, butchers almost never give freebies, apart from the occasional candy!

Not trying to sound mysterious, but the perfect recipe is going to depend subtly on your locally available flour, and on the temperature of your kitchen... I am just about to replace my 2nd breadmaker -- it's just too feeble to knead the dough anymore. It's been used daily, because although longrise handmade bread is much better in texture and flavor, the breadmaker makes better bread than the Japanese supermarket version. Why don't I make our own bread by hand every day? 1) The breadmaker has a timer, 2) the breadmaker produces much less heat in a summer kitchen than the oven, and does not overload the power supply and black the house out in winter, either! I hear that horizontal pans with double paddles produce a better crust than vertical pans, but haven't seen one. I have used sourdough in a breadmaker -- I found an explanation on the Internet which involved putting cooled boiled water and whole wheat flour together in a jar, and just leaving them to ferment. Theory: wheat grain coating contains enough of the needed yeasts to ferment the flour, and introducing other stuff or leaving the jar uncovered just risks contamination from unwanted microorganisms. Practice: it worked perfectly! Best starter ever!

Yep, Nick, I'm country-born too, and my mother didn't drive (she was VERY supportive of me getting my license at the earliest possible age!), so I have an urban version of a country pantry. I'm well aware that my Japanese neighbors, who shop for every meal, think that my fortnightly stock-up is not good planning and cautious preparedness, but laziness and the sign of a poor cook! I also usually keep one spare of every common item...a mistake in a Japanese-sized kitchen, but I can't get out of the habit. I curse myself every time I trip over the earthenware jars of miso and salt plums that line our corridor, but continue to make new ones every year. Good Japanese cooks don't store polished rice for more than 2 weeks. I therefore don't keep more than the 5kgs we go through in that time. I do keep enough noodles for about 5-6 meals, and enough flour for 1-2 weeks of bread-baking. With 2 adult men and 2 boys in the family, "enough for a meal" is quite a lot... Dried food doesn't keep well through the rainy season here, so I always use it up by spring and restock in the fall, buying just what I need during the summer. Dried beans are not cheap here, so I only keep about 3 half-pound packs in stock. I rarely keep more than about 10 types of herb and 5 types of spice, because I don't want to accumulate a huge range of stale stuff. However, I have to admit that while I let stocks run out of common stuff, and serve noodles instead of rice if I run out, if I run out of coffee, it's down tools and straight to the store!

Try this link for making middle eastern style pink pickled turnips. I make this every year ready for Christmas and New Year, because it is so pretty on the table (and soooo easy). http://202.186.86.35/kuali/recipes/arpickles.html I usually store them for 10-20 days rather than the 5 suggested in this recipe. Also, you can add coriander seeds or celery leaves to the pickling vinegar mix. I use chunks of red cabbage held together with toothpicks to color my pickles, as I cannot buy beetroot locally. Other vegetables can be added...squares of red bell pepper (I don't use the very top, just to reduce the chance of mold or other spoilage), chunks of blanchd cauliflower, radishes, slices of carrot cut with fancy cutters, etc.

I found that article too, not that it left me much wiser! Thanks for the info, Kiwi. By the way, the shape and the mention of "biscuit" (scone) dough make me wonder if this is a savoury version of one type of pinwheel scone -- you spread a sheet of dough with your seasoning/filling, and roll it up - and then, instead of cutting rounds off, you cut not quite through, then curl the roll around in a circle, fanning the petals out on the baking sheet. You do indeed end up with a flower shape, and you pull off each "petal" to eat it. However, if you made the rolls small enough, you would get an single-portion-sized version. ...just guessing though!!

There is NO ONE THING I can't do without. Running out of rice used to mean shopping time -- no more! Just too busy to get to the shops, even when I know we've run out of our staples. I hate ancient cans lingering in cobwebbed cupboards, so I only keep canned tuna and canned tomatoes, and maybe corn and fruit. Fresh stuff: Thin-sliced pork in the fridge, and some kind of salt fish in th freezer. Seasoning..recently vinegar is my all-purpose seasoning, sharp when fresh, mellow when cooked. Recent additions to the "core pantry list": Red pepper -- Chinese chili paste is my staple, but this sprinkling thing is addictive, and my sons are now old enough to like it when their food bites back...a little. Tempeh: keeps longer than tofu, extra quick for lunchbox food.

Well, you have this Kiwi totally confused! I don't live in NZ, so trends come and go without me hearing anything about them, but ...kipikipi?? Our best-known "NZ-only" bread would be "rewena", a version of bread created by Maori cooks, using a potato-based leaven (rewena means "leaven"). I'll ask a friend who works in food science in NZ and is always interested in new stuff if she knows anything about it.

Heh heh...you're reading the wrong magazines -- you have to toss "Non-no" , "Egg", and even "Frau" or "Domani", and go for "My 40s", "Miman" and "Maple" if you want to get to the nitty gritty... However, I think you might be right about the flushes -- I've heard people talk about "nobose" with dizziness of the "blood rushed to my head" type more often than in relation to menopause.

traditional brown sugar in Japan is called "black sugar". It comes as a block, and is similar to molasses in taste. It certainly has more minerals than more refined sugar, but I can't see how a tablespoon in the simmered vegetables is going to make THAT much difference...but it's good with sardines cooked "eel-style", grilled with a glaze of black sugar and soy sauce brushed over it.