helenjp

Sigh...well..it just HAS to be Japan's traditional Christmas cake -- a shortcake with fresh strawberries. This year a chocolate cake and maybe chocolate ganache too. Christmas pudding is too much on top of strawberry shortcake, so I make it early and we have a Twelfth Night pudding instead. Also, we have a full-on Japanese-style New Year, and there's only so much cooking a body can do!

Sigh...well..it just HAS to be Japan's traditional Christmas cake -- a shortcake with fresh strawberries. This year a chocolate cake and maybe chocolate ganache too. Christmas pudding is too much on top of strawberry shortcake, so I make it early and we have a Twelfth Night pudding instead. Also, we have a full-on Japanese-style New Year, and there's only so much cooking a body can do!

Matsutake pizza...b-b-b-but I thought matsutake was famed for only releasing its wonderful scent in water?..So...what ELSE is in this topping? Evian? We've given up ordering pizza, because the pizza delivery guy can never find our house. And of course, the rarer our orders, the less likely it is that they will ever figure out how to get here. After a mammoth 2.5 hour wait, I decided we could make a dozen pizzas in that time, and who said pizza dough needs to rise before baking anyway... However, the rot has set in...the kids think mayo/pineapple/corn/nori is a perfectly good pizza, so I just make the base and let them have at it!

to get back to specifics... I use konbu-dashi in sunomono, a hang-over from my Osaka days.

My rule of thumb is that if I can see the dashi in the finished dish, it needs to be ichiban dashi or konbu dashi. If the dish is simmered or dressed in a dashi-based mix, then a niban dashi will do. I lived in Osaka/Kyoto when I first came to Japan, and used konbu-dashi quite often. Didn't use niboshi-dashi until I came to the Tokyo area -- I believe katsuo dashi is used more in summer and niboshi in winter; katsuo for udon soups, niboshi for soba soups. Some aemono are made with konbu-dashi in Kyoto and with katsuo/konnbu dashi in Tokyo. Also, konbu dashi is used in temple cooking and by extension, for very formal funerals and often for New Year's dishes instead of katsuo/konbu dashi. I used konbu-dashi for nabe in Osaka, but more likely katsuo/konbu dashi in Tokyo. Konbu-dashi tends to sour quickly, one reason why it is not used so often at home. Some people leave a few pieces of konbu in a jar of sake, so that they can have the konbu flavor ready at hand without worrying about spoilage.

Hmm...dinner...when was that, exactly, again?? We are working on a kind of endless rotation at present -- dinner has to provide leftovers for next day's lunch, and sometimes breakfast is cooked while doing the dinner dishes the night before [ prepare oven-baked french toast, rice congee and boiled eggs, porridge etc. for finishing in morning], or else breakfast has to be cooked in the morning at the same time as the rest of the lunchbox...the lunchbox cooking has to include soft items that can be dropped off at father-in-law's house for his lunch and maybe dinner...and before I leave the house, I start our dinner, and maybe add a couple of items to the "meals on wheels" menu. So today's "elder menu" is egg rolls with finely chopped spinach in the middle, a bit of grilled salt salmon, and a thick rice congee for lunch, and then broccoli cooked squishy and mixed with shreds of chicken meat in a gingery chicken thickened clear sauce, eggplant grilled then peeled and heated through in a sweetish soy dip, miso soup, and soggy rice for dinner. For dinner last night (racks brains, oh yes) we had grilled shishamo (skinny salt fish with roes) dragged out of the freezer, undressed boiled spinach, and miso soup with deep-fried tofu and broccoli, plus rice and natto, and served with plenty of apologies! No complaint from kids, who for dessert were allowed free access to the stuff St. Nicholas brought on the sixth! (Kids don't seem to have noticed that the onset of St. Nick's visits coincided with husband joining a German company...) Dinner tonight depends on somehow getting to the supermarket today -- a favorite when I don't get there is a can of saba (mackerel) cooked with water-packed bamboo shoot in soy sauce and sweet sake, but I'm even out of those staples.

Gosh...what a boring life we lead! Husband is probably the only person in Japan persisting with a personal ban on Morinaga products since they refused to take responsibility for poisonings which occurred when cleaning products found their way into baby formula...30 years or more ago now, but some people have long memories!!! This has certainly made it easier for me to manage the kids' candy intake! In recent years we also don't buy gummy candies containing gelatine, ever since I discovered that Japan continued to import animal waste-based cattle feed from the UK even after UK farmers stopped feeding it to their own cattle because of BSE... What's left? My personal favorite is a thing called Coffee Beat, small chocolatey coffee beans that come in a cardboard tube. Old-fashioned apollos are also fun to put in cakes or cookies... For kids in other countries, I often choose Meiji's Kinoko Yama series because the kids like to choose different types, and the cookie/choc combination is OK for kids with fillings or braces too. They don't break as easily as Pocky either. My kids always go for maximum mess -- the ones you get to mix together and dunk in syrups or powders etc to eat. They also liked the gummi fruit that you "pick" off the vine to eat. Currently there's a fad in our house for the old-fashioned hard red or green umeboshi -- usually sold in packs of 1-3 in the discount snacks section! I always pack a selection of the latest candies when posting Christmas presents to my nephews, especially the seasonal chocolates. Personal favorite: Kash, a kind of thin nut praline bar. This year's choice: Fujiya's marron glace chocolates (little chocolate coated mounds with a souffle choc filling and chunks of marron glace) and souffle na roco, chocolate coated clusters of almond, plain choc, and souffle choc. Perennial favorites: hard brown sugar candies as well as the newer types. At one time there were fruity ones with soft centers, haven't seen them recently. Kids like the fizzy ones too, but they seem to be more common in summer.

also, cheap dried mushrooms are likely to be "kiln-dried" -- they are more brittle, and of course, mechanical drying is likely to be used on the cheaper grade mushrooms, so the caps are usually flatter and thinner. Stir-frying with dried mushrooms...that's definitely pushing your barrow uphill! They are used mostly in long-simmered dishes, though sometimes the soaked mushroom is used in one dish, and the soaking liquid used for cooking rice, in soups, or other dishes.

I agree that you have a good chance of getting fruit off a Meyer lemon tree -- they tend to bear prolifically in the ground, though my unreliable memory is that the trees are shorter-lived than other lemons (maybe only in borderline climates??) In fact, because Meyers are so easy to grow in much of my native New Zealand, they are scorned and looked down on by serious cooks, who claim to prefer the sharpness of the "real" lemon...doesn't tell you much about the nature of the Meyer lemon, but reveals the usual tendencies in human nature!

well...gyouza?! Despite the many gyouza styles that I wish had REMAINED stuck to the pot and not made it to my plate, there are lots of good ones. We make nira/cabbage/pork ones at home, in batches of 60...

Ankomochi in ozouni, yeah, that's definitely Shikoku-style! My first husband's family came from Takamatsu. The ozouni prepared by my MIL (from Okayama) was a white miso soup with small rounds of daikon and carrot, grilled buri (yellowtail), and round mochi cooked in the soup...the bowl was always stacked high with pillows of finely shaved bonito and scraped kelp (tororo-konbu). FIL always waxed nostalgic about the ankomochi zouni of his youth, but he never mentioned whether they had had clear soup or white miso. In Tokyo, I make a standard Kanto zouni for my Hokkaido-born husband. Quite a few northern traditions are not found in Hokkaido, because it was settled from so many different regions. I believe that some Hokkaido people put salmon and salmon roe in their ozouni, but husband's Tohoku-born mother always used chicken with komatsu-na, small round spiral pattern (naruto-maki) kamaboko and grilled mochi in a clear broth. DH can't remember what else she put in, so I usually add shiitake, mitsuba, a slice of plain brown-top kamaboko, and yuzu peel.

Oh good, a place to ask my question... "vegetarian suet"...what is it made from? Is it different from solid vegetable fats of other kinds?? I can't get beef suet here in Japan anyway, and I usually use a grated apple recipe (had a nice grape one, when I lived where grapes were cheaper...), but I'm curious about all the references to vegetarian suet that I see on the web. This year I'm thinking of reviving a recipe my mother used to make, for strange little knobs filled with currants and lots of chopped fresh mint...

My husband can't eat much dairy, but finds yogurt OK -- eats it daily -- and for some reason, is devoted to a "live-culture" yogurt-based digestive aid. He is fond of cheese and icecream, but has to be careful how much he eats. Talking of Japanese dairy products, I found a string cheese flavored with karashi-mentaiko (or so they claimed) at the konbini recently...

>>no substitutions excepted!<< Oops, that was Ms. Green Fields talking...a wine discovered in the local konbini purporting to be made from grapes grown in NZ, produced by Messrs Kirin-Seagram, and thus bringing shame on one continent and several islands all in one bottle! Regards

Heh heh, wouldn't you guess it...it's great with NATTO!!! I've also made that Claudia Roden recipe. Love it, and there are days when THAT is what had to be on the menu, no substitutions excepted! I think one reason why recipes are hard to find is that there is more than one way to spell it. It is one of those things that keeps well frozen, raw and chopped.

Hmmm...vegies! Carrots have my full enthusiasm in theory, but I like them best deep-fried -- the texture and the sweetness!!! Collard greens...where did I read that Caldo Gallego is the best way to encourage kids to eat their greens? They weren't wrong. Daikon...here in Japan, the usual wisdom is that they should be precooked briefly in the starchy first-rinse water produced when washing rice (or failing that, chuck a spoon or two of rice in the boiling water). That removes any harsh or bitter flavor, leaving them all ready to absorb soup flavorings. I tried to short-cut it, but that step turns out to be important if you want to enjoy your simmered daikon! Before I learned that, my uses for daikon were pretty much restricted to tenderizing octopus -- a recipe book I had said "beat your octopus gently with a daikon..." an instruction I certainly couldn't resist following! Here simmered daikon is mostly served in "oden" a soy-based simmered dish of daikon and fish sausage or tofu products and devil's tongue root jelly...but it goes well with a chicken or beef stock too. You can also sear thick slices so they get a bit sunburned, then cook them slowly in a soup. Or grate the daikon finely and use it raw on top of a steak or strongly-flavored grilled fish...or add a little soup stock and slowly simmer other things in (good with oysters, tofu, and a little green onion, served with lemon and soy, for example). The vegetable I have least time for (apart from eating them as edamame) is green soybeans. I tried to make a zunda-ae dressing from them once, which involves popping each bean out of its skin and mashing them. Maybe because they are still green, they were not willing to be denuded. I swore that I would never make that dish again...

Guess what? A 60s recipe of my aunt's that combines black coffee with pears is actually remarkably good. The original had the pears in a coffee jelly. You don't have to go that far, but the two flavors were definitely meant to be together.

From Japan, the land of cheap butters of uncertain age... I suspect that a higher water content makes for a tougher pastry, but never sure whether it was the cheap butter, or some other variable. Other butters...not sure it's so relevant to baking, but I used to be able to buy cultured butter. I REALLY liked it -- none of the faintly rancid taste that I detect in butter bought fresh in butter-eating countries. Hence, my favorite for butter-finished sauces or with potatoes, etc. Sorry, can't help with brands! There is a definite difference in taste and appeareance between butters from grain-fed and grass-fed cattle. I used to notice when the cattle went from pasture grass to hay and turnips -- you could taste the turnip in the milk and butter! On the other hand, grain-fed butter tastes too bland for me -- while I know Scandinavian women who would never bake Christmas cookies with anything but the palest winter-fed butter. In any case, many farmers feed their cattle things that give the butter a yellower color.

Cream korokke...mmmm I found a recipe in something like Croissant once that advocated that you cook the bechamel verrrrry slowly for about an Ice Age or two, till all hints of pasty flouriness are gone, and the milk has reduced (and probably caramelized!). I tried it, and they were wonderful. So wonderful, that I have never had the heart to make them the normal way again, but since I don't want to go to all that trouble...cream croquettes are now off the family menu!! Tip: flour and egg them twice before crumbing them, to avoid explosions! Other croquettes I like....satsuma-imo ones. And other than that, just plain ole ground meat and potato croquettes...I like them coated with the finest grade of panko, mixed with a little sesame seed. By the way, what shape does everybody make theirs? In our house, the normal ones are always baton shaped, and the sweet potato ones are disk shaped.

Whew! For a minute there, I thought that KFC had stopped selling smoked chicken halves at Christmas -- the only reason my husband agrees to take Christmas Day off work, I suspect! Better get our order in... Kids have already decided that they want the usual Japanese strawberry shortcake this year...to be made with a chocolate spongecake this year, they say! Regards

no equivalents of natto??? Different texture, but how about tempeh? Not stinky enough? But don't you love that squeaky-teeth feeling! It's also next-best to instant for quickly putting together a packed lunch. And cubes of stinky tofu cheese in jars, oh yes, that brings back memories. I like the chili type with congee. Having gone to the trouble of acquiring the taste for natto (it seemed appropriate on a student budget), I was pretty annoyed to find that I'm allergic to soybeans. I tell myself that anything fermented doesn't count, heh heh, so all the stinky stuff is still in my kitchen.

Not boring! Totally exotic for me, even if I were reading this in my native New Zealand, and not in Japan. Whole chickens...whole wheat breads...is this the same planet you are talking about?!

I like to plan meals too. Decided long ago that I'm rarely too tired to cook, it's almost always a case of being too tired to think! I'd never heard of canned stock until I found some about a decade ago...bought a half-case...it made everything taste the same... Famous words from Japanese family-oriented cooking "personality" -- restaurant stock is meant to look good and provide an unassertive base for more elaborate flavorings, so you clarify it and never let it boil and so on, but family stock is meant to taste good, and anything that furthers that end is legal. Period! Cooking with little kids sounds so nostalgic! My 11 year old woke the entire household just after 5 am so he could cook an omelet for DH and I to put in our lunchboxes today... Yawn!

Wow, all these recipes!!! Brings back lots of memories of working in a Chinese grocery when I was a student -- lots of our customers were homesick Malaysian or Singaporean students -- haven't had that kind of food much in Japan, but I'm indoctrinating the kids every time we fly through Singapore. I got so excited I saved all the recipes into my translation file by mistake...oops. Talking of garish desserts, some Singapore people just might know that the English version of Sony's e-mail PostPet software is Singapore based -- and you can download tiny graphics of Singaporean sweets to feed your virtual e-mail-delivery pet. As a consequence, my kids got off the plane longing not for noodles or tropical fruit, but for pandanus-flavored cakes! ...getting a bit off topic here...

Gizza yell then, and I'll be there with bells on...also haven't been there in years...family's mental maps of the area show only model train museums, electronics shops, and guitar studios. I DID buy almost all of my serious Japanese kitchen equipment in the Osaka version though -- 20 years and more ago, but I bet it's still a great place to waste a few hours in!