helenjp

Escolax... we don't see it in Japan, so I don't know if its reputation is justified, but certainly some other deepsea fish are also reputed to cause problems for some people. "White tuna" - if you never heard albacore called white tuna before now, maybe it's not referring to albacore. Any pictures?

Hi Darienne, just racing to get 3 hours sleep before the day starts again...I think I probably meant that some of the chemical changes that happen in drying mimic pyrolysis (the more extreme heat of cooking/fire). When I first found that out about herbs, I suddenly understood why certain items are dried in the sun rather than the shade....to encourage the development of certain flavor compounds (I suppose the ones that depend on thermal change rather than simple water loss). As you can tell, I don't know enough about it...I wish I knew more about what happens chemically when a plant is dried. I know that I was expecting vegetables to start tasting like EITHER almost fresh OR almost dried...some mushrooms did seem that way, but turnips and their greens definitely had an in-between identity that was quite unexpected.

I got hold of a Japanese book on cooking with "lightly dried" vegetables. I've only started to explore this area, but as temperatures drop, and we have sunny but cool and breezy days, nothing could be more topical, so here goes! The idea is that you dry vegetables for 2-4 hours (or for a few days for more thoroughly dried products) before cooking. That translates into: * hanging turnip greens upside down from a coathanger * slicing or quartering mushrooms and scattering them on a tray * not-too-thin slices of carrot, turnip, green or red peppers etc on a tray * potatoes or apples etc soaked briefly in water to shed excess starch, cubed or quartered and laid on a tray * Hearting greens halved or quartered, laid cut side up in the sun. Cooking...in most cases, food was prepared as normal - the results were just a little different. For example, you can brush semi-dried potatoes with oil and roast them, or you can stirfry turnips and greens, add funghi to rice or toss it in an oily marinade with some pasta. Since there is less moisture to shed, these vegetables tend to cook faster. The texture is not over chewy or crunchy, but has none of the sliminess that a bad stirfry can produce. The flavor of the turnips and greens was incredibly more apparent - more aromatic, sweeter, slightly peppery. Also, curiously enough, the greens remained a nice color. I swished the tufts of greenery under the tap after drying them, just to wash off any dirt, and this caused them to rehydrate quite considerably. However, they didn't behave like "raw" vegetables...they obviously had not regained all their moisture. Semi-dried vegetables can also be dropped straight into a marinade to rehydrate. Again, the texture avoids any hint of sliminess, and the ability of the vegetables to absorb flavor is of course enhanced. They are not as aggressively chewy as fully dried vegetables. Flavor...I was anticipating changes in flavor, as I knew that drying herbs "pyrolizes" certain flavor compounds, and I think this is the biggest single point of interest in making semi-dried vegetables - they retain a lot of fresh flavor, but with an added layer of new and interesting flavors and aromas. There was a fad a couple of years back for drying enoki mushrooms and adding them to rice or pasta, as their flavor is dramatically enhanced by drying. Some people have tried drying vegetables by a sunny window over the day (when out of the house), but in this case, it might be worth having an electric fan or dehumidifier running nearby. OK then...see your local greengrocer and dry happy!

The winter bento - it is a challenge. For a start, Japanese winter bentos have been revolutionized by the office microwave and the thermos bento sets aimed at schoolkids. My husband's boss decided they didn't need a microwave, so he has a cold lunchbox even in winter (refuses to lug a heavy thermos lunchbox around). But then, he grew up in Hokkaido, and apart from keeping their lunches by the classroom stove, he doesn't remember being bothered by their naturally "refrigerated" lunches. It might be worth checking out Korean lunch foods, because they meet most of the following criteria...although your kid's classmates might want to keep their distance after lunch! * season food that will be served cold more highly, and add a little sugar (helps retain moisture and keep food softer). * Stay away from fried food - oil/fatin panfried food will congeal, and deepfried food will get hard and dry (if you must deepfry food, roll it in a sauce of ketchup/worcestershire, lemon or ginger plus a little chicken flavoring etc, sweet & sour sauce, etc. The moisture will improve the texture when it's cold). * winter is sauce and dressing season - a little dab of mayonnaise or of any kind of sauce will provide flavor and texture to help that dried out, flavorless, rock-like winter bento syndrome. Japanese sesame-dressing, miso dressings, Korean namul (toned down to kindy palate!) all help keep food moist and tasty. * tofu is an ideal winter bento good, and turnip/carrot are good too... they can be cooked ahead, they absorb flavor easily without needing fat, and they are juicy to bite into. If you want to make simmered dishes, add a tiny portion of cellophane noodles to help absorb any stray juices without making the dish too dry. * beans in Japan are often simmered in a savory broth, then finished "glace" style. However you serve them, simmered beans are a good winter bento food. * mashed potato or potato salad, sweet potato, pumpkin, beans, (and even omelet) can be seasoned and mixed with snippets of ham, whole corn, peas etc, and spooned into a square of wrap. Twist the top of the wrap to create a swirly peak, unwrap and pop in into the bento (ideally in a paper or foil case). A sprinkle or dab of something on top is pretty. * eggs and eggy foods - especially the Japanese savory omelet or the Korean jeons and related dishes - these really come into their own in winter. Boiled carrot in a bento vs. boiled carrot strips bound with just a little egg or egg/flour batter plus onion/seasonings - no contest! * Steamed dishes (even microwave steamed)...a steamed mini-cupcake dessert is a good winter treat, and you can make similar things in tiny containers with either "almost sweet" flavors and a few raisins or a square of soft cheese or cubes of cooked sweet potato, or you can go downright savory. * Mini-gratins...you can have these in the freezer and run them through the toaster or microwave in the morning...a veg or two, and a dab of white sauce, surface clutter to taste, and you're done. Japanese books often top with cheese, but I think that's a mistake in winter...crumb topping would be better. I must admit, it's easier to make an entire meal's worth of bento food for three big boys and men than it was to make tiny portions of kindergarten bento food all those years ago.

I have just over 100 cookbooks - most are skinny Japanese books, so that's just over one yard of shelf space. I've used over 95% more than once. However, there are plenty that I've made no more than 5-10 recipes, so I moved all those to a Try Harder pile! As others remarked, the low-use books show a common trend: ) - books bought out of duty or as a second-best choice: I "should" have a book on kaiseki (but I really prefer the equally elaborate temple style of cooking), or I couldn't find just what I wanted on Kyoto cooking (so I bought a less than inspiring book "in the meantime"). - books that are too general (the above mentioned "recipe collections"). If there is no theme or concept behind a book, I'm unlikely to read it from cover to cover...and so I miss the gems that are undoubtedly hiding there. Conversely, "specialist" or "concept" books are the ones that really get heavy use. Because the author's message is clear, it's easy to identify the main points of each technique or recipe, and I use individual recipes and adapt other information from this type of book much more.

Prasantrin, I forgot to make that exact point... I really don't understand why they didn't make a better seal on the insulated container. It's just fine for carrying rice, but it would so be very handy for wetter dishes plus sides. Beautiful but impractical bento - I have a lovely theater-going lacquer set...you can imagine how much use that DOESN'T ge, but they are beautiful to hold as well as to behold.

Egg molds - I used a small egg, molded it while hot, and left it overnight in the refrigerator...no difficulties with shape retention. Bento boxes - we have one of those classic Zojurushi bento pails, Chris, and it is a bit heavy. I have used it mostly to leave a complete dinner on the table when one kid needs to come home, eat, and go out again in a hurry while I'm out! Son1 occasionally took it when he didn't have much else to carry, or far to walk. Our standard winter bento is like #4 or #8 in Prasantrin's link...an insulated container for rice, with two separate containers for side dishes. There are many variations of this type - they are lighter than the pail type, and the hot rice makes more of a difference than whether or not the side dishes are hot or cold. In fact, it is more useful to be able to pack fruit etc. when you DON'T want it kept hot! During warmer weather, we use #22 in Prasantrin's link...some reviewers complain that the side-containers are too small in relation to the rice container, but I often layer the rice with something like egg soboro, salted salmon roe, or Okinawan andansu miso-pork. That container has an aluminum rice container (cools faster than plastic in summer, when rice spoils easily), with two separate lidded plastic containers. One good thing about this type of bento box is that the containers tend to be a little deeper than the old-style bento boxes - making them more versatile. A shallower top layer (like those below) is a little harder to pack large items in, though it makes it easy to arrange bento foods attractively and helps to KEEP THEM FROM MOVING ROUND. This Shokado-style bento is also a family favorite...we use an older model, but it's much the same: plastic deep bottom layer has a removable divider, allowing you to pack less rice if you prefer. A press-down mold (wet first) allows you to mark bite-sized divisions in the rice, not only pretty, but easier to eat during short lunch breaks. The top layer in our model at least is sometimes a bit shallow, but the removable H-shaped divider is very handy - you can have 4 divisions much the same, or none, or slide it along so that you have one large, 2 medium, and 1 small division.　If you scroll down the link page, you can see another variation with an avocado-green lid. These two are a bit smaller, better for women or "normal" adults...the one with the black lid (swirly design on top) is the one we have, and it's just a bit bigger. Too big for my husband, fine for teenage boys. Some of my son's friends like this type of donburi bento - rice with topping, for the kid in a hurry - just open wide and inhale! Those with particularly large appetites for for a Tupperware lidded salad bowl... Flat bento with insert containers this type of box is out of fashion, but is what my husband takes each day. He likes the fact that the rice container isn't too big in proportion to the side dish containers, and the two containers keep items in place and separated...no sneaky movement of sloppy ketchup from the meat to the omelet! Snag - all these bentos with clip-on lids will eventually need to have the silicon rubber packing replaced - we keep a small supply (in the appropriate size) of Slim bentoboxes are popular with women - too narrow for sandwiches, but the smaller ones are enough for a woman, and narrow enough to fit into a big purse easily. I had a particularly skinny one that I found very easy to pack (just line different items up in a row!) and easy to eat from. Round bento boxes with a soup bowl for a lid are also especially popular with women. You can't carry soup in them, but they are handy if you like to make instant soup at your workplace.

If you want recipes, you don't need a cookbook...most recipes are just riffs in the same old modes, and for that, you have the web, and surprisingly, sometimes newspaper columns. Cookbooks help me delve into a particular topic - regional food; breadmaking techniques, etc. - and also (more rarely) give me an insight into the genius of a particular person's approach to food preparation.

A range of quality in fish and meat, definitely...I was reading a recipe that said "Use good quality chicken for this..." and thinking that all the supermarkets sell the same stuff, the small butcheries and have just disappeared. Fish-shops are still there, but they sell a very narrow range of fish these days, because the everyday fish is bought at supermarkets. I also resent price-fixing...I have to pay more when fish or vegetables are scarce, so why shouldn't I be rewarded with lower prices when there's a glut? I'm sick of hearing about squid and sardines being dumped at sea to avoid lowering prices; and hearing from friends who work in supermarkets that vegetables are dumped or re-routed to downmarket discount stores rather than tarnish the shop's image by offering cut-price seconds. I just don't see the over-ripe bananas and the mounds of "hurry these into your pickle barrel" cucumbers at greengroceries these days either.

Is the new Kurihara book "Everyday Harumi"? It came out last month, and I haven't seen it, but the cover photo shows her mixing up something that looks suspiciously like beans dressed with sesame...a great dish, but definitely one that appears too often in English! If you want a stepping-stone to using Japanese cookbooks, how about something written for children (i.e., something that has furigana to help with the kanji)? Unfortunately, almost all such books are for western-oriented snack/brunch/party food - I7ve looked and looked for such books for "home-alone" kids, but the last thing they need is "making cute party food with okaachan". However, here are a couple that look more useful. In particular, the second one is about techniques rather than recipes, and has a lot of illustrations. I haven't seen them, so can't be sure about the furigana. Saa, hajimeyou! Kodomo cooking Daidokoro no shigoto - kodomo to master suru 37 no chouri no chishiki (Illustraded ed.)que Finally...I've been noticing western Japanese-langauge cookbooks more than traditional Japanese-language cookbooks recently, as the home-cooking world seems to be on a macrobiotic kick and I feel that's well served in English already. The other trend - "easy" and "quick", and more recently "low-cost" recipes that follow a downward spiral of lower expectations - I think men such as Kentaro or Koutetsu are writing better recipes for this need than the women just recently...almost all family cooking is easy to cut costs on - the challenge is cheap 'n tasty eating for one or two. However, two people who do have my attention are: Eiichi Edakuni - I recently bought his Yasai de Shusai (vegetables for drinking snacks), though he's better known for his Kuzushi Kappou book on modern Kyoto-style cooking - but this is more tapas than formal dining. You can chill out at the author's website, named after his Paris Guilo Guilo restaurant...the site is too cool for actual information. The site for one of his Tokyo restaurants, Yamashiro-ya gives a better idea of what he's doing. Local Chiba boy (? local ojisan?) Takatoshi Suzuki also has a content-light website...his most recent book is Washoku no Hyouban Aji-zukuri. This is straight down the line fine Kanto-style Japanese cooking, but the flavoring is both lighter (less sweet) and more modern (a creamy vinegar-spiked tofu dressing rather than richer toppings, crunchy kibbled brown rice to coat deepfried dishes, instead of sesame etc). Both these books (particularly the Edakuni one) are dominated by photo pages. Recipes are crammed into small-print sections at the back...plenty to see if you just want visual inspiration; maybe hard work reading without side-by-side visual cues, though. The Suzuki book does have some commentary on the photo pages.

We do have a discussion of Mark Bittman's Chocolate Tofu Pudding, but let's not restrict the suffering to chocolate! It's easy to see why chocolate gets so much attention...it takes a lot to get past the grassy taste of tofu. However, tofu desserts have much to recommend them - they don't spoil as easily as dairy products, and they don't always need gelatin. Maybe I'm imagining things, but tofu seems to taste milder when it's warm (and fresh) - my favorite sweet tofu dish is really Chinese "flowers" of tofu with syrup made from light brown Chinese rock-candy sugar or Japanese black sugar. I'm thinking that prunes and red wine would be good in a creamy tofu dessert. One question: a recipe I used today called for gelatin dissolved in a very small amount of water, mixed straight into the cold tofu and other ingredients (including undissolved sugar). I hate this technique...with small amounts of water, it seems to be impossible to avoid leaving half the gelatin in the container you dissolved it in, and I'm rarely happy with the resulting gel - just never seems to thicken evenly. Does this technique work for everybody else? I knew it, I'm just a klutz... Meanwhile, today's tofu dessert was super easy - easy enough for me to make it at 5 am using vegetarian gelling agent, to include in lunchboxes. Where I bet it didn't set properly (although it makes a puddingy texture even without gelatin). I used silken tofu rather than cotton tofu in one layer...it does need a gelling agent more than the cotton tofu does, but it also makes a smoother cream. Tofu Layer Dessert Cocoa layer: 300 g (that's about 10 oz) cotton tofu 2 T cocoa powder pinch salt 70 g sugar (about 1/3 US cup) (I used granulated despite misgivings - no graininess noticeable) Blend all in food processor, add 5 g gelatin in 3 T water, simmered till dissolved. Blend to mix, set aside (you need the food processor again). Strawberry Layer 150 g cotton tofu (half a pack, 5 oz) 150 strawberries or other berries 2 T lemon juice if berries are not strongly flavored 70 g sugar (about 1/3 US cup) (I used granulated despite misgivings - no graininess noticeable) Blend all in food processor, add 5 g gelatin in 3 T water, simmered till dissolved. Blend to mix. Layer the two mixtures...it is thick enough that you don't really need to set each layer as you go, though you will need to work carefully to keep layers neat. I wasn't really happy with the texture (acceptable, but not a fine cream), but I was using a stick mixer rather than a food processor. I'll be back with some other desserts using soy milk as well as tofu, as fast as I can persuade my family to eat them (can't eat much unfermented soy myself, which is maybe why I don't care for the taste very much).

I meant to say...keep the amount small for the first week! Even dedicated trenchermen seem to find the first week of kindergarten distracting. Kris, did you grow that zucchini...or did you pay *actual cash* for it? I'm very impressed with the chorizo, by the way.

Pink mixer...my gadget crypt contains a pink Mitsubishi cake mixer rated 60 watts. There's a dead Bamix in there too, they are now 250 watts, but my old one is probably less than that. My beloved Braun Multimix is 350 watts, and current models are 300 or 400 watts. Even the cheapie Tescom mixer is 500 watts...I think you can see where this is going, but note that the Cuisinart handheld seems to be about 170 watts. That's similar to some Japanese handheld mixers...I'm not convinced! Chestnut flour...I believe that most processed chestnut for use in confectionery gets turned into paste (for those "Mont-blanc" cupcake things), did find one reference ONCE to Japanese chestnut flour, but wonder if it is aimed at wagashi and may be too coarse for western baking? There are several products which are used as flours elsewhere in Asia, but not here. Maybe this is just one of them. For that reason, my October-born DH gets cakes and pastries with satsuma-imo or pumpkin creams. He's totally unimpressed, he really wants a strawberry shortcake, and after 20 years I have yet to convince him that in October, I can't even find frozen strawberries. Fruit and nuts...I really resent paying a high price for ingredients for homey baked goods, and substitute freely. What does everybody else use "instead"? Talking of subbing, lard is often cheaper than butter, even in Japan, and if you make your own on your way to making Okinawan andansu, making lardy cakes becomes a positive virtue!

Singapore is buried treasure territory for cookbooks - it's largely replaced Hong Kong as the place to get good quality color printing, and since there are at least 4 distinct culinary traditions there, I always make a rush for the bookshops. One favorite, Norzailina Nordin's Sweet and Savoury Malay Kuih is still available second-hand on Amazon (though they miss-spelled her name, just to help us find it better). Marshall Cavendish is a major Singapore-based publisher of local-interest cookbooks. Look for names like Norzailina Nordin, Terry Tan, Betty Saw (was betty Yew), Azrah Kamala Shashi, Martin Yan, Amy Beh (mainstay of Kuali, see below), the ubiquitous Chef Wan. Some of these authors are available through places like Amazon, some have gone on to publish with Asian-oriented US houses like Periplus Publishing. The Star Kuali section is my favorite online resource for Singapore...not only recipes, but a good place to figure out which writers to follow up on.

I use a modified bokashi system, mostly because Japanese houses are so close together that putting your compost in an out of the way corner of your own balcony or garden just means you are sticking it right under your neighbor's nose. Bokashi is a kind of pre-fermenting starter that is mixed with kitchen waste as you go, so that unpleasant bacteria and the insects and vermin attracted by rotting vegetation have less of a chance to get to work. Since it's based on bran, it also helps to absorb the excess liquid that is a problem when kitchen waste rather than garden waste is your main compost ingredient. I have a special bucket which has a mesh strainer a few inches above the bottom of the bucket, and a spigot at the bottom. The idea is, again, to get rid of excess liquid. The spigot is only necessary if you are going to compost in the actual bucket (you need two or three buckets to rotate). Currently, the kitchen bucket gets emptied into the outside closed plastic compost container once every 10-15 days (again, neighbors are too close for an open heap). The plan was to have two containers and rotate them...but darn it, the stuff rots down so fast with rice bran that it never fills up. Current plan is to transfer contents to a woven polythene sack at the end of fall, let the old compost mature in the bag over winter, and start accumulating fresh compost again in the container. Some people in apartments just mix rice bran, leaf mold, and commercial soil mix, and add some to each day's compost in a small woven polythene bag which is closed tightly when half full and left lying on top of a few bricks out on the verandah for aeration, shaded from direct sunlight for a couple of months. This year has been my best composting year ever, thanks to good advice as follows: Browns - you gotta have 'em, and they help to reduce bugs and smells as well as making better compost. I buy plain old garden container soil, and sometimes leaf-mold, and save my Amazon boxes (too many...but they have little printing on them). I tear up cardboard and layer it in my kitchen collecting bucket. The first layer goes in the bottom (over the strainer, in my case), and stops the strainer clogging with waste or mold/bacterial film etc.), and then I add more cardboard every 2-3 days until the kitchen bucket is full. I knew you *could* compost cardboard, but making a real effort to include it has made a huge difference. Bran - I gave up using bokashi mix, and started adding a handful of rice bran every time I added kitchen waste. I compost fish waste etc., but not fat or fatty meat waste, bones, or very salty waste. Wheat bran would be just as good...grain heads have plenty of yeasts and other organisms ready to start fermentation, so they are just as good for compost as they are for beer. Part of the compost plan involved buying a small electric rice polisher and switching to brown rice, polishing just what we need to cook every day.I think fresh rice bran is best, but bran from a rice shop or mill would second best, with supermarket bran a final resort as it is likely to be heat-treated. Advantages of compost - I did get a bit slap-happy with raw compost in containers and beds where I wanted to grow greens, and paid the price - woodlice proliferated, and ate every single seedling! However, I usually plant tomatoes in hip-high garbage containers, with a bucketful of raw compost mixed with earth right at the bottom. That has never caused problems.

I know at least 3 teen boys with seriously ill parents and a couple more who need to fix their own dinners...they all (and my two boys as well) love to cook Italian! If you're going to buy a recipe book and/or basic stocks, a really, really simple Italian book would be my recommendation. Other than that, I get most response with small books on one-dish meals that are not only easy to make, but are also very familiar and easy to imagine, e.g. XYZ on toast.

I do think that blinkered reading is less a matter of intent and more part of the regional publishing agreements (and damn the greed that wants to extend that to content and format of audio-visual media as well...). On my last move to Japan in 1990, I transfered all my handwritten recipes to my hard-disk, with a back-up floppy. Both drives immediately crashed, and the Japanese manufacturer of my computer didn't want to repair a machine made overseas under license. Since the internet had not really hit Japan, shopping therapy was called for...for a Kiwi missing her extensive collection of NZ, Australian, and UK-published cookbooks, both vintage and new, even the few coffee-table US cookbooks in the Tokyo bookshops were a novelty...Rose-Levy Berenbaum, some book on cookies (American cookies are Martian fare for me!), something called the New Settlement Cookbook which introduced me to things called "Silver Cake" and Ribbon Sandwiches...lots of fun discoveries, different concepts of suitable pastries and "standard" seasonings, etc. Not to mention different measurements, and flour that obviously needed more or less liquid than I was used to. I don't know that I can identify one NZ writer, though I'm pretty taken with Peter Gordon at present. However, he is just one person at the crest of a wave of "vege-loving fusion fans" from NZ, who have turned their eyes away from Britain and towards other temperate maritime climates around the Mediterranean, and other Asian and Pacific cuisines closer to home. Others in this vein would be Julie le Clerc, Peta Mathias, Fiona Smith...and I want to check out Anne Thorp's Kai Ora on healthy Maori eating, which has a very similar feel to it with more local ingredients. While Britain's Jane Grigson is well known in the US as an eclectic cook with strong northern roots, other writers of the same generation and similar origins are Dorothy Sleightholme, Peggy Hutchinson (who wrote many books on home wine making), also Mary Norwak and Mary Watts. Their books often have astounding regional gems rubbing shoulders with comfortably sloppy fast but frugal family fare. NZ writers alternately derided and respected for this "frugal family" approach are Alison Holst (I use her Cooking for Christmas book often - slender but reliable), Allyson Gofton, and "easy-peasy" Jo Seagar, who blushes not to give recipes such as lamb in coffee and cream. Best places to get an overview of NZ food are Cuisine magazine, NZ House & Garden magazine, TVNZ Kiwi Kitchen (clips can even be viewed outside NZ), and food pages of newspapers such as the New Zealand Herald, Southland Times, Marlborough Express, The Press (Christchurch) seem to be the most active. Mana Magazine has a small food page which is about the only place on the internet to find names such as Rewi Spraggott or Anne Thorp. ...and yes, it HAS been a while since the Australia and New Zealand links were updated!

Can't confirm it, but it is possible that water or boiled water (called "sayu" or "white water") was the basic drink...green tea and barley tea were both of continental origin, and not much more than fashionable drinks for the wealthy back in the Heian period. On the other hand, Japan's water supplies have generally been cleaner than say the plains areas of China. I can't help thinking that tea was a commercial crop rather than an everyday drink for farmers until late into the Edo period...Japan has a fair number of herbal teas, but possibly kaki-no-ha-cha (persimmon leaf tea) is the only one that was drunk as much for pleasure as for medicinal purposes (mainly because persimmon leaves are not hard to come by?).

Practically have to go and rustle my own if I want lamb or mutton these days, so I'm just fantasizing along with you all... I used to enjoy making the lamb dishes in Helen Saberi's Afghan Food & Cookery. There are some Afghani recipes on the net, too. Emerald Rice goes well with Afghan lamb qorma...at this time of year, maybe the fragrant, sweet apple Qorma e Saib or, even better, the mushroom Qorma e Samaruq. The Chinese chives (known to me as nira in Japanese, gandara to Aghans) not only goes brilliantly with spinach in the rice dish, but both go well with mushrooms and lamb. Qorma e Samaruq ingredients: Onions, lamb tomatoes red or green chili turmeric, fennel, and ginger salt Plenty of mushrooms - the mushrooms and tomatoes will shed enough water with no need for added water or stock. I like to use maitake (hen of the woods) here in Japan, but a nice range of mushrooms will surely taste good anywhere! Very similar recipe

Not at all far from what I broadly conceive of as "the topic"...on the one hand, the Japanese take on western sweet dishes has developed into an interesting tradition...on the other hand, there are certain things that work better than other for expat cooks (easier to make/better liked by Japanese palates)...on the third (?) hand, there's an interesting kind of whirlpool where those two currents meet. For example, for people outside Japan, the idea of a yuzu cheesecake is exotic...for us, it's partly about using accessible and affordable ingredients. I can source yuzu way more easily than I can find cherry preserves, for example, and ama-natto (candied beans) are easier and cheaper to find than good quality dried fruit. How did tablet go down, by the way? I find it interesting that Japanese find western baking too sweet (though I admit that I find US baking very sweet)...whereas westerners often find an (bean jam) too sweet at first. And what is Ecclefechan tart? Shortbread - I really like making shortbread in Japan, Japanese people seem to like the crisp/tender texture better than the texture of bagels or fruitcake, and there is a nice range of rice flour to choose from. I know some people like to use cornstarch etc in "melting moment" style shortbreads, but I don't at all like the excessively fine texture that creates. I'Ve tried various kinds of joushinko, and now use a combination of Riz Farine and cake flour. That "Wa Sweets" book gives shortbread proportions as: 100 g butter/50g powdered sugar/120 g cake flour/40 g joushinko. That's about the proportion of rice flour to wheat flour that I use, but I find the total amount of flour vs butter depends a bit on how finely milled the flours are - rice flours in particular vary a lot, and the riz farine is finer than joushinko, meaning that a little more butter is sometimes needed. Kinako shortbread with brown sugar is a good taste, but needs a bit of experimentation as the moisture in the sugar and the generally ornery nature of soy flours can make the shortbread too hard. I have to do some more experiments with that... Mixers: the average Japanese mixer is obviously meant to whip cream or eggwhite, not cake mix (and certainly not yeast batters...don't ask...). My husband bought me a Braun multi-mix by accident. That has outlasted all its many Japanese-made predecessors. Amazon.co.jp sell Cuisinart, but they do take up a lot of room. Nothing to stop you making genoise with a balloon whisk, though. The hand mixing entitles the cook to an extra slice of cake!

One thing I've discovered the hard way is that all stainless steels are not equal. The ones that look more yellowy sometimes do corrode, while the bluer looking ones seem to be made of sterner stuff. Worse, the trays inside the cheapo ones don't seem to be put together as well either - mine have sprung apart, while the older but sturdier set soldier on bravely.

Well, well - a bilingual book on regional Japanese cooking Recipes of Fukuoka by Tsuda/Matsukuma/Caton, 1,575 yen, published in July 2009. I have yet to see this, but regional recipes in English are hard to come by, and this is an interesting venture. Fukuoka not only has access to both Inland Sea and Pacific Ocean seafood, it also has a long tradition of Chinese influence in its food. I'll be interested to see what's in this.

One more ... this is a recent book by Katsuhiko Kawata, "Beeshikku wa Oishii - Au Bon Vieux Temps Kawata Katsuhiko no Okashi" It costs a whopping 6,500 yen. I have an out of print softcover (Kurashi no Sekkei series no. 210) book of his on traditional French baked goods. It is not a fat book, but it is outstanding. My copy is falling apart, I never look at any other book when I want to make something that he has a recipe for. Time is no object, his methods for candying fruit or making fruit pastes are just pure, unhurried classicism. I haven't seen this new book - since the book I have concentrates on older traditions, the recipes are not the usual modern range of patisseries. Au Bon Vieux Temps shop is in western Tokyo, near Oyamadai on the Tokyu Oimachi Line. I hope to visit one day.

This question has come up several times...I find it useful to use Japanese recipes for "western" baking, because they are designed for Japanese flours. Also, Japanese versions of western patisserie and other cold and hot sweets has developed its own style. Recipes tend to be much less sweet than US baking, and certain local ingredients have developed into new standards. My trusty favorite Japanese books are all long out of print, so I was forced to buy some new ones just to share with you. I've also listed some I own that are still in print. Aisukuriimu (Icecream) ga Daisuki! Kaoru Shimamoto, under 2,000 yen, Bunka, 2004 Here Icecreams and sorbets designed to be made in a sorbet/icecream maker. As one reviewer points out, the low-fat/low-sugar approach means they tend to be hard and icy if you rely on simply mashing up the ices manually as they form. Full fat recipes with cream are also included, sugar is on the low side but not fanatically so. Subtitles are in French, and there's a European trend apparent, with chestnut icecream and icecream with cherries in brandy. There is a section for more child-friendly recipes, and also plenty of Japanese or Asian ingredients, from green tea and kinako to sake and star anise. Some sauces and recipes for serving with icecream. Ekizochikku na Pan, by Junko Nakamichi here out of print but still availabe. This is a slender and affordable book (under 2000 yen second hand)that is packed with recipes from China to North Africa and even central and south America that work well in Japan (stove-top baking, or short oven times), and even better, includes some homey family recipes to go with certain breads (Egyptian melokhia soup, soup to go with Chinese flower rolls, etc. I've used this a lot. Shiritagari no Okashi Reshipi here by Rumi Kojima, Bunka, 2007, under 2,000 yen. Reviews grumbled that the "unusual approach" was pretty much used up by the first recipe in the book, the author's trademark choux puffs with whipped cream and a rather stiff pastry cream. That is true, but the recipes (haven't yet tried this just-bought book) all show signs of thought! Eclairs with a crunchy croquante mixed into the cream, choux puffs with a cookie dough on top, how to keep sponge roll mixtures or pound cakes from being dry, yogurt cream rather than chantilly cream for fillings, etc. Wa Suiitsu (Sweets) no Hon, here　by Junko Fukuda, 1,000 yen, 2009, Graph-sha This is my "find" of the year. I walked past it several times, the matcha roll cake on the cover just didn't arouse any curiosity. Some recipes are quite complex, but most are not. Son made the souffle cheesecake (yuzu flavor), and it has an excellent texture. He wanted more sweetness - apart from the syrup clinging to the yuzu, there is around 1 oz of sugar in the entire recipe - but I didn't miss it. This has all the usual matcha suspects, but a lot more besides - dark cherry yogurt mousse with salted sakura and sakura liqueur jelly glaze...Galette du Roi with azuki...sorbet with white peach and daiginjo sake...white miso and poppyseed chiffon cake...4 Japanese flavors of macaron...sesame and kinkan (those tiny citrus, forget what they are in English) tart...lots of interesting ideas. The low sugar content trend is evident throughout the book, and is typical of modern Japanese patisserie. I bought a few books recently for a family friend who is thinking about becoming a patissier - his mother is an excellent cook, but doesn't bake, so he's starting from scratch. These are books that would be handy for a Japanese-speaker living in Japan, newly bitten by the baking bug. Sorry, I no longer have the books to hand. Kazuyoshi Aihara "Okashi-zukuri no Naze? ga Wakaru Hon" (Bunka, 20019, under 2000 yen) here This is one of those books that goes into basic cake mixtures in detail - how to know when you've beaten eggwhites enough, etc. Hironori Nakayama and Makiko Kimura "Kagaku de Wakaru Okashi no `Naze?`" here Similar to the above, but I think more detailed in analyzing "what went wrong". 21009, Shibata Shoten, under 4,000 yen. I think this is a better book, but too much for a beginner. The "Ichiban Shinsetsu na..." series has a good cake book here that covers most standard patisserie cakes. I bought the bread book here in this series for my young friend, because it contains some easy small breads (grissini), as well as being comprehensive enough to cover natural yeast baking. SO...what do you bake in Japan, what Japan-style desserts do you make or want to make?

I plan to try the lentil & eggplant dish that Jaynesb recommends upthread...I made a lentil salad recently from Peter Gordon's Salads book, and was amazed how well the pomegranate molasses went with lentils - two well-muscled flavors duking it out there on my plate, I was entranced. The dressing was very simple - Gordon recommends 1 part each of pomegranate molasses, mild vegetable oil, good olive oil, but since I was not using a really great, thick olive oil, I used 1:2 pomegranate molasses and olive oil. Pomegranate molassses on chicken etc didn't give me that "this dish HAS to be made with pomegranate molasses" feeling - I think it was because the chicken was overwhelmed by the pomegranate, while the lentils were earthy enough to fight back. I do like a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses in a small glass of water.