helenjp

Chiba- definitely kashiwa-mochi (fairly plain glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with anko,wrapped in an oak leaf). However in recent years we occasionally see chimaki on sale...though they are a travesty of the original, and in this area it seems that even the cheapest kashiwa-mochi are the better bet!

How's it looking? If you made it with fully ripened ginger (bought in late autumn or winter) I think you shouldn't run into too much trouble? If it's the ginger flavor and not the hard work you are after, try a ginger shochu when the new ginger crop comes out (June-July), with a bit of lemon if liked. Really nice on the rocks in summer and much lighter than the Stones type.

Pickles, definitely, especially when you can re-use the pickling medium, as in Japanese bran or miso pickles...and I imagine a brine barrel (well, a container in the fridge, lessay) that will produce several batches of brined meat is similarly economical. Apart from the cost, I find that almost no pickles on sale have actually been fermented rather than simply salted, so have to agree with those who say it's not really an apples=apples comparison. Granola, definitely cheaper to make at home, and has been since I was a student and we switched from bread to granola after calculating that home-made bread was more expensive than store-bought. If you bake casseroles etc in your oven, then using the same oven to make family-style butter or oil cakes and cookies (rather than fine baking) is quite economical. Yogurt - we have been making our own for well over a decade, and it costs about half of store-bought yogurt. Garden produce - this is rarely cheap unless you have plenty of land, but herb teas are surely cheaper than coffee and tea! Sage tea is a favorite, and a peppermint that is way too strong too eat makes great tea. By extension, a little hyssop, marjoram, parsley, chervil, and garlic chives make salad dressing something you will never feel inclined to buy ready-made again.

manju=baozi Quite a few Japanese/Chinese words have this "m or b, take your pick" thing. I did know why once...something about the region and/or period at which the word entered Japan and was preserved, while in China the word evolved or another region became more powerful and their pronunciation took precedence. ju = ji = zi...that's not such a stretch. However, I often wonder what manju were like when they first came to Japan, given the Kansai style of manju with yam rather than yeast to make the dough soft and springy...can't help wondering if the "old-dough" fermented dough is the original, which Japan replaced with the yam dough, or whether the yam dough is the original style and the fermented dough a later development that was also imported to Japan later. But manju becoming a major breakfast food in Japan? I can't see it...any more than my son's Weetbix stash is having much impact on his dorm-mates' breakfast habits "oop north" in Sendai!

I think a bento always has to feature starchy foods prominently, and be designed to be eaten cold. I think that bread and pasta are stretching it a bit, actually, because both are already salted, so the kind of side dishes that work with them are quite different from the mostly heavily flavored items that go well with cold Japanese rice.

Gosh, I didn't think it came any other way but wild! I agree, it bakes very well, and curries nicely too, but I like it smoked even better.

Have a great time...it's been so many years decades since I lived in Osaka that I can't give you precise recommendations, but I'll have a think about different areas. Osaka people have a reputation for enjoying their food, so you should be able to keep yourself busy!

Looks basically good, don't you think? Knobbly top and picture of crumb makes me think you could maybe use a bit more liquid...but doesn't look excessively "tight". If you DO find a whole-wheat bread flour, it will certainly take more liquid than a cake/pastry flour. I find that the protein content of "bread" flours varies widely. If it's more than 10% protein, you should be OK, and if it's over 11.5% definitely suitable for bread...but I rarely find a whole-wheat flour that high (after all, since it includes the entire wheat berry, the protein content is necessarily lower than white bread flour). Hydration: sometimes I put everything in the bread mixer except for 1 cup of the flour plus the yeast, and let it mix just until the water is all mixed in. Then I switch it off and leave it for an hour or more (this is not a technique for really cold weather). Later, I add the remaining flour and yeast, and start the bread machine cycle from the beginning. The idea is to ensure that the tougher outer layers of the wheat are thoroughly wet. However...I still haven't decided whether doing this makes much difference or not!

I don't use milk or milk powder in whole-wheat bread-machine bread either - it seems to make the loaf too sticky when baked. I use a bit more olive oil than Blether does, and often add about 1 T of vinegar, as it makes the flavor less bland. With my bread-machine (very cheap Japanese brand) I find that the standard bread course seems to work better than the whole-wheat bread course. Several other people have told me the same thing, so it may be worth experimenting to see which you prefer. I use at least 1 t of instant yeast (SAF red, as it gives me a more consistent rise than the Japanese yeast I was using) per 350-400g whole-wheat (but also use less than recommended when making white bread), because my family prefer the springier texture, but a dense loaf is good too. Flour and water...experiment!! It depends on how fine your flour is, as well as protein/ash etc. Needs to be a bit stickier/wetter than a bread-machine white dough. (I also use about 300 ml liquid, including oil, then I hang about till it finishes mixing, and decide whether or not to add another 1-3 T).

If you have more than you need for aerating the main pile, you could BURN it, and then mix the ash into the compost or sparingly onto your soil.

I probably started out with a recipe for mulled wine or bishop in Elisabeth Ayrton's "Cookery of England". If possible, 2 oranges per bottle of wine are best. I usually squeeze the juice in and then toss in the squeezed halves (or some of them) but it's even better to grill the squeezed orange before putting them in the wine, to mellow the harsher aromatics. Because I squeeze the oranges, I put the cloves into the quartered apples (1-3 apples depending on size and desire for end-product apple). Japanese people are generally not fond of cloves and only mildly enthusiastic about cinnamon, so I only add about 3 cloves and 2 small sticks cinnamon or cassia. I always use nutmeg ( you can smash up a nutmeg and use about half), and often add several slices of ginger. Cardamom or allspice as desired. Apples do a lot to mellow harsh red wine. Until recently, it was hard to get even moderately good red wine at a reasonable price in Japan, so I rarely mull wine without them now. Sweetening...I'm not fond of stickily sweet mulled wine - a little mild honey is good, but apples and apple juice add a more acceptable sweetness as well as mellowness, and apple juice also helps to keep the alcohol content low enough for a quaffable drink. I like the wine-simmered apple with breakfast yogurt, and it also goes well combined with plain apple in crumbles or deep-dish pies.

Getting a bit late in the season, and Granny Smiths may be a little tart, but I find woolly apples plus an orange and some spices are great for mulling wine. The wine-simmered apples can be used in something like a relish.

Your Japanese Kitchen in English with Harumi Kurihara and Daniel Kahl is broadcast weekly on NHK channel 3 (Sunday 13:30)and also on NHK World (via cable TV, and also on the internet at the same time the TV broadcasts take place). There may be restrictions on availability of the internet broadcast, depending on what country you are in. P.S. The program archives include an okonomiyaki recipe that is pretty close to the way I make it, with both egg AND yam.

Nailed it, I do believe. It tastes like angelica, but I recall the woman who prepared it saying that it was NOT "ashitaba" (Angelica keiskei). How does Angelica japonica var. boninensis, in Japanese Munin Hama-udo. (Hama-udo is the Japanese name for A. japonica), sound? A Japanese blog with a photo of the plant (scroll well down) mentions that the Ogasawara variety is in constant danger from goats. This is exactly why Australian and NZ visitors to Ogasawara had trouble understanding having protected turtles on the menu, while exotic but endemic goats were not!

The Furi Pro knives appear to be made in China. I expect that China can make good knives, but it's not known for steel knives. I am not sure whether Furi is incorporated in Australia or in the US, but their promotional material stresses that their knives have at least some nontraditional aspects in design/manufacture.

Yesterday at the bookstore I was flipping through a book called Guimauves and Marshmallow (or maybe Marshmallow and Guimauve...). At the back of the book were several pages of ideas on packaging marshmallows to give away. One I liked was to pop a one-person serving of marshmallows into a paper cup, fold the top sharply in half, and simply close the top with fancy tape (especially the pretty paper tape you can buy). She had also taped a skewer (wrapped in paper, natch) to the side of the paper cup. There were also repurposed glass jars with circles of fabric tied over the lids, and paper egg cartons with (wrapped, of course) individual confections in each depression, a thank-you card laid on top, and the whole thing tied with raffia.

What country are you in? Sake kasu is normally refrigerated...hope somebody can point you to a source not too far away.

I think that the acceptability of home-made gifts is about the same in Japan as elsewhere, but that people make more effort in wrapping. The packaging somehow has to scream "I prepared this box just for you, I didn't pull it out of the closet and dump my socks out of it". Gifts of home-made baking that I've seen have mostly had each portion separately wrapped - probably partly because food gifts are often shared around, and it's a kindness to have stuff already divided up. E.g. 2 cookies back to back or 1 slice of pound cake in a small cellophane pack with a pretty sticker to close it, all sitting on a small nest of paper wool or wood shavings to stop them rattling round, in a wrapped box and presented in a bag. Pretty much a more homey and cuter/cooler version of what you might get from a shop. So it might not matter if you wrapped the box in advertising supplements, if you made it look cool enough... Good luck with your new life!

I use mine so fast that refrigeration is not needed unless the mix includes katsuo-bushi or similar. If soy sauce is made with the normal amount of salt and fermented properly (some cheap brands are more or less "instant"), it should have a good amount of its own umami...and should also preserve dried kelp or shiitake in anything but extreme heat and humidity. Refrigerating mirin...this sounds like a "don't blame us!" reaction from the manufacturer, to be honest. If you only use mirin occasionally, it might be best refrigerated, but in a normal Japanese kitchen, it is normally stored out of direct sunlight, but not refrigerated.

There are lots of similar products in Japan, but I think they probably don't attract much attention (and maybe the same is true of the Taste No. 5 product?). Taste No. 5 seems to be basically umami-rich Italian flavor base...Japan can give you any number of products based on herbs with added umami, though these usually use MSG and only rarely kombu or dried funghi, and even a Kagome jelly dressing product called Toma-pon Gele - tomato and yuzu flavored. As for MSG-free products with a Japanese taste, I guess they are so entrenched that people just think of them as seasonings with extra depth...e.g. miso with dashi flavoring, soy sauce with funghi, kelp, and/or seafood such as dried shellfish or squid. Lots of people make the same kind of all-purpose seasoning mix that I use - soy sauce and mirin, with some konbu (kelp) and dried shiitake tossed into the jar. The Umami Choumiryou Kyoukai (Umami Seasonings Association) sponsors a bilingual website Umami Information Center which does discuss umami in non-Japanese foods, though doesn't promote specific products.

Do you recognize the Nippn packet from this line-up? link I always get the impression that people use these mixes for speed and convenience when making bentos...the end product seems to be designed to be robust enough to last several hours in edible condition, rather than to mimic the best fresh-made karaage.

Milk and bacon are definitely "nonstandard". Water, yes, or dashi stock. I have used bacon but find it a bit salty with all the toppings that go over it. How did your okonomiyaki turn out, Toufas?

So the Martha Stewart recipe topping works out as: 1 c flour 1.5 sticks (170 g) butter pinch salt 3 T ice water Oven 425F The picture shows pieces of dough...that's just what I associate with a pandowdy, a patchwork or scattering of pieces of dough, with or without gaps. My recipes are also stove-top for the apples, oven for the pastry.

You do need a sharp knife and a clear conscience, as they say, but if you soak the dried chili briefly first, then cut the top off, slit it open, remove seeds and veins, and open it out flat, it can be done. I've been trying to recall which of my books had those instructions, but can't give a source, sorry.

I think the pandowdy concept may have fallen by the wayside! I used some apples I had mulled with some red wine yesterday, added a little more red wine, juice and zest of an orange, a few more apples and some raisins, simmered that till mostly cooked, thickened it slightly, and topped it with a biscuit dough warmed with just a little cinnamon, to underline the "mulled wine" flavors. It was good, but it might have been better to use black pepper in the dough and park the cinnamon in with the apple.