helenjp

This definitely needs its own topic! Currently in Japan there are.... Beers, from lagers and occasionally pilseners to "kuro-biiru" or black beers. There are locally-brewed beers (ji-biiru, should mean a small independent brewery but sometimes means a regional product from some of the biggies), but the four biggies are Sapporo, Suntory, Kirin, and Asahi. The best known second-tier makers are Orion (Okinawa) and Higashi-Nihon Sawauchi (makers of Ginga-Kougen beer). The big breweries all (? I think all?) produce soft-drinks as well as beers, and non-beer products such canned chuu-hai (shouchuu mixed drinks). They have their flagship long-seller beers, and also an ever-changing range of items designed to catch the latest trend, and other products limited to certain seasons or certain regions. I believe that low-malt "happoushu" are the biggest-selling beer products at present. Hiroyuki linked to this wikipedia overview in another topic, and as it points out, the category includes both malt-based and malt-free beers, but "low-malt" is the general concept. The third category, "Dai-san no biiru" is the category most closely associated with zero-malt beer-flavored drinks that are "spiked" with some form of spirits. As for what people actually drink...of the happoushu, our favorite is probably Kirin's Ryoshitsu Sozai, though Asahi's Goku-uma is OK. I find the "dai-san" beers a bit harsh, but haven't tried many. On high days and holidays, my husband might treat himself to a can of Black Label, Ebisu or Ebisu black (Sapporo), or Malts (Suntory).

Well, I don't know. I started looking round at the way Japanese friends who like to bake deal with the results, and realized that they give away a lot of what they bake, and in fact it's so much part of their mindset that they buy cute bags and other packaging along with their baking supplies. I bet your baking gets shared quite a lot too? Your lunchbox looks just like an old-fashioned Japanese aluminum lunchbox, minus the dividers! I've seen Sigg water bottles here, but not lunchboxes. Is that the lunchbox you mostly use?

I started the "poor, vegetarian student" thing in the '70s, and of the vegetarian cookbook authors of that time, Anna Thomas was by far my favorite. There's a book called "Vegetarian Sandwiches" by Paulette Mitchell which sounds interesting - does anybody know if it is?

Well, this is the only non-specific (despite a slight Body for Life bias!) topic I could find in this forum, so here goes... Ever since the Meat and Morality topic, I've been thinking about what longterm sustainable good healthy eating is, in the practical terms of what we buy, how we prepare it, and what our meals look like. Specific eating plans don't seem long-term to me, because I have a skinny, fussy husband, and two ravenous teenage sons as well as myself to feed - I want to think about healthy diet overall. Totally agree with KatieLoeb about soups. As for foodstuffs, since some healthy eating involves leaving the mainstream, I really need to plan/get back into planning menus to make this work longterm. My first goal is to increase green vegetable intake - not only through recipes, but via better storage so that I can keep leafy veg on hand in better condition (currently I TRY to store green veg upright, wrapped in newspaper in the vegetable drawer of my fridge), and growing a small supply in containers, for freshness and variety. Favorite dark green vegetable dishes: * Rapini or similar dark greens boiled together with pasta, served with a little oil and pepper. * Rice congee with a soft-boiled egg (preferably a salt-pickled one!) and dark green vegetables drizzled with a little sesame and chili oil. * Curd rice (rice with yogurt, left for a few hours, eaten with pickles, fresh cilantro, green chilis, and scallions). P.S. * Cooking vegetables with their leaves, e.g. turnips, is a favorite method with me.

So many issues.... Diabetes - coming to Japan, I was most suprised to learn that races differ in how easily/severely they develop diabetes, and I know plenty of Japanese Type II diabetics who are either not more than a little plump, or who have never been beyond normal weight (though many of these drank pretty heavily). Worse, the statistics show that they develop the more severe diabetes-related problems more readily - so if countries with majorities or large minorities of diabetes-sensitive people are lowering their diagnostic thresholds, more power to 'em. Genetics and weight - yep, there's no getting round it. I look at the ancestral gene pool, and quail. We must have a metabolism designed to hoe the fields all day on an input of thin porridge and boiled turnip! I know that when my husband and I eat the same, even Japanese standards flag him as underweight, while the same standards of course make me obese. What others are saying about lack of exercise rings true for me - maybe even more than diet. A year of watching over a sickbed, then trying to re-establish normal sleep while also re-building my home-based work has shattered this old bod. When I used to work outside home, I found that the Japanese "walk + train" and "walk/cycle + shop" lifestyle provided a lot more exercise than life in suburban New Zealand. Like most people, I find that being "fat but fit" is OK healthwise, and not even too hard fashionwise , but being obese is limiting. And not only physically limiting, I believe that being TOO fat affects my mood and my limited brainpower too. Meanwhile, I'm going to dig out that topic in the Cooking Forum about eating "less" meat and see what people are actually up to. Not because meat is the Evil One, but because eating less of it almost always leads to eating more body-friendly food. I'm also interested to see how people who want to be healthier are dealing with the undeniable burdens involved in finding, paying for, and preparing what have become minority food choices.

Wow - more "good restaurants" than I've visited in 20 years, probably! As for Tsukiji, it's hard to know what was going on, of course - on the one hand, I think groups of foreign men are more likely to be regarded with apprehension than mixed groups; on the other hand, foreigners are frequent customers at Tsukiji restaurants. There are situations where being foreign arouses blatant differences in treatment, but restaurants have never been a problem in my experience. Tofuya Ukai seems to be one restaurant where people consistently have a good experience. Your meal there sounds so good! The Takao restaurant (Ukai Toriyama) sounds very normal in their policy - usually dishes designed to be shared have a note in the menu stating that you must have a minimum of 2-3 people to order, and it would be pretty unusual to have two such set-ups on one table! Sounds as if that time they cut you a little slack as foreigners!

Cheese ! Bookbinding ! You couldn't perhaps show us a cheese sandwich casually arranged in front of (one of) your bookbinding press(es)?

Heck, of course you preferred the Ebisu. And not only to "Zero nama" - Ebisu is preferable to everything! Some of us have married people because they preferred Ebisu....

Yup - but after I took a good look at the vine, I decided that it didn't deserve my sole tomato spot, so it went to join its maker...

There certainly aren't 4H-type programs in suburban areas, and of course, the agrarian tradition here is plant-based, not animal/plant-based. So there are certainly "adopt-a-paddy", ""bucket-paddy" etc, initiatives to familiarize children with those traditions. Hens and rabbits have traditionally been kept at elementary schools, but since the bird-flu scare, the hens silently disappeared from schools over long vacations. . At the same time, there were reports of abandoned flocks of pet hens, as people tried to disasocciate themselves from keeping birds, without incurring expense or inconvenience. I think it would be difficult to START keeping hens in suburban Japan now, without getting crowds of irate neighbors on your doorstep claiming that you were trying to spread bird flu. It might also go against the cultural grain to keep your poultry population young enough for efficient egg production by culling the old ladies from your flock regularly. . I don't think there are actual restrictions on keeping poultry in "pet" numbers, but local governments have become very interested in keeping track of the exact numbers of birds people keep. Recommendations are to keep poultry enclosures netted over the top, to prevent contact with wild birds. I'm sure that the hens of my childhood would have hated that - they liked to roost in the lemon tree. Perhaps Hiroyuki remembers the guy who kept lots of fancy poultry near where I live, selling the eggs for incredible prices? He's closed down the shiitake part of his operation, and I'm not sure whether he has been able to continue keeping poultry or not.

OK! I recognize that coffee-maker, my parents had exactly the same type, until they were deemed Not Good and everybody threw them out so that their kids could re-purchase them 20 years later! I'm looking forward to seeing your vegetable box - that type of service is very popular in Japan, so it will be fascinating to see the Brooklyn equivalent. Birds in the kitchen...doesn't worry you preparing food close to a bird-cage?

You didn't use any weights except for the plates? I would expect that you would need a weight around twice the weight of cabbage. You also need to tamp the cabbage down really firmly. Apart from that, I've never made sauerkraut in spring, only in late fall, so I'm not sure about temperatures at present - and fall cabbage has good sugar levels, which help fermentation, for sure. I've heard that you can cheat a little with small batches of sauerkraut by adding a tablespoonful or so of whey drained off yogurt, but I haven't tried it. P.S. I haven't made kraut with brine, just by rubbing salt well into the chopped cabbage before packing it into the pickling container. I don't know about spring cabbage, but fall cabbage is usually juicy enough that 3 T coarse kosher/pickling salt per 5 lb cabbage should be enough to get the brine rising past the level of the cabbage within 24 hours. I think you will only need extra brine (boiled and cooled) to "top up" the level. The Ohio State University fact sheet is a great resource on sauerkraut and fermented pickles.

You found it! I have no sense of direction, and was about to say "just look for the giant pufferfish", but I see you did that... Hope you enjoy the rest of your Osaka experience.

This one's for smallworld - I noticed a recipe for kinpira using maple syrup instead of mirin. It wasn't carrot though, which is probably too sweet to go well with maple syrup.

Robata-yaki shops used to (probably still do) sell butter-yaki enoki mushrooms, seasoned with soy sauce. When I mentioned it to my family, they yelled out "Mentaiko spaghetti" to a man. And yes, I guess that spaghetti dressed with salted cod roe also includes butter and soy sauce. Butter and soy sauce are good with corn on the cob (or popcorn for that matter), but so is sesame oil and soy sauce. Parsnips boiled and then shaken around in butter or sesame oil and soy sauce are very good, but parsnips are not to be found in Japan. Since I grew up with butter and marmite/vegemite, soy sauce doesn't seem a strange partner for butter at all!

I tend to go to extremes! My local supermarkets don't seem to go for the 100-yen eggs, so I usually buy either the standard bulk brand that each supermarket stocks most of (=fresh), or the very expensive free range eggs at supermarkets which sell enough of them to get in fresh stock at least twice a week. Brands that promote the superior chickenfeed or water they give their chickens always make me feel suspicious - a battery hen with a deluxe bento is still a battery hen. I do buy them sometimes, and some brands do seem to have better eggs, but not all of them. This is the brand I usually buy - Jiyouran site - despite the misleading name, these are not laid by free-range hens. The best free-range eggs I can buy come from very local producers. I'll post a photo next time I get to the supermarket that stocks them. I kept hens when I was a kid, so I don't like buying eggs from badly-raised hens!

I'd never thought of akamutsu/nodoguro as anything but a second-best substitute for gin-mutsu/mero (merluza etc.) in saikyo-zuke (miso-pickled, using sweet white miso). If those akamutsu weren't already salted, I bet they would make a tasty home-made himono...not hard to do in this weather.

Foodman, sorry, I should have been clearer - where I live in Japan, a lof of "ordinary" fare is exotic - but Italian food is popular, so I can buy fresh white mozzarella, but not a chunk of hard cheese. I'm really appreciating reading the resposes, though, and think that one of these DVDs/books will suit our needs.

Shinsekai is the place to try blowfish, if your tastes run that way. When we were in Osaka recently, we raced in to Zuboraya - not the main restaurant in this photo, but in their slightly food-hall-ish Annexe (Bekkan) nearby, as the main restaurant was full. While the restaurant was rather lacking in atmosphere, the 1,700 yen fugu teishoku (set meal) was good value, including fugu tempura and a sharply spiced vinegared fugu dish as well as the conventional sashimi. Fugu sashimi is more thrill than flavor, but fugu tempura is very good. We spent about 15 minutes in the shop, from ordering to running for our train , but if you have more leisure, they also serve fugu nabe, Japanese beef sukiyaki, octopus, etc. Another product you will see in Shinsekai is Billiken cakes and cookies, shaped like the malicious-looking Billiken figure that has become a kind of good-luck charm in Osaka. My husband was determined to buy some for his workmates, but decided they looked so unappetizing he left them alone. (Don't bother visiting the gold one behind glass - housed in Tsutenkaku, I think??? - it's a replacement anyway, and you can't rub its feet, head etc in the approved manner, whereas the resin fakes lining the streets are quite available for a friendly pat).

The texture you describe sounds just perfect. Would you reduce oven temp to around 180C/350F, or down as far as 160C/325F? She has a newish and fairly small oven - I'm thinking that maybe temps are dropping too far when she puts the batter in at the beginning. I checked her recipe earlier today - nearly twice as much butter by weight as sugar or egg whites, and her recipe called for whole egg too. So I gave her Nightscotsman's recipe to try. Your recipe's instruction to weigh butter after browning sounds sensible - I'll work out a conversion and try it. At a glance, it looks as if the proportions are pretty similar to nightscotsman's and similar recipes, but with more flour/nut meal.

A friend showed me some financiers she wasn't happy with today - rather heavy texture, with centers a bit translucent, although they were not undercooked. As she is a qualified pastry instructor, she was ticked off! You may see her here on eGullet in due course, but meanwhile... Likely causes? Several Japanese recipes specify at least as much butter as eggwhite (by weight), which is a higher proportion than any of the recipes given in this topic. I suspect that part of her trouble is that she didn't really get the butter to a noisette stage, so maybe there was too much moisture....or maybe she mixed the butter in when it was too hot...or maybe there was just too much butter? What about sugar - is the fineness of the granulation a big issue - I'm inclined to think not, though Japanese granulated sugar is quite coarse, while the conventional sugar is slightly moist and has some invert sugar in it - should be fine for financiers? Flour - what sort of protein content would be best here? She's an organics enthusiast, so I'm guessing she may have used a domestic flour with no more than 10% protein maximum. Nut flours - recipes in this thread vary from equal parts nuts/flours to around 3 parts nuts/1 part flours. Preferences? And finally...what kind of texture do you think of as ideal for financiers? Somewhere I read that they are basically the same as madeleines, but that doesn't ring a bell with me at all - I'm quite happy to have my teeth meet a little resistance in a financier...wrong?

Crepes - they were getting has-been by the '70s, but I believe they were at the peak of their popularity in the '60s.

Loved your ume hanami - hanami WAS "ume" until cherries took over! Your bento looked great. By the way, what is the brown color in the potato patties - potato skin, or something like mushrooms? I've never made modan-yaki, but agree with your DH that okonomi-yaki batter has to be Osaka-style. Nothing! Sorry to confuse you - Snap is a very simple card game - you just put cards down, and if two cards of the same value are laid down consecutively, the first person to say "Snap!" scoops the pile. So the "snap" breakfasts were the ones that resembled ours, but your weekend one went way above and beyond our breakfast! Kakeibo - I don't keep one at the moment, but after keeping one for a while, I kind of know that I can afford to spend x amount on meat/fish per week, x amount on vegetables, etc. There's a freebie Japanese software program called Gamaguchi too. I had one from an Eiyou to Ryouri magazine that had columns for "staples" (starches), "dairy and other proteins" and "vegetables", "condiments (from oil and salt to sauces and herbs)" "pleasure eating" (! beer and snacks??) and "eating out". They had some great chart in the back indicating the average spending for each category, Engels index, etc etc. I could never do that longterm, but tracking snack foods and drinks and eating out as separate categories was useful. Maybe that's why people don't buy fruit much here - because they want to keep their "snack" category spending down? I observe one or two receipts from GEO in there, so extravagant!

I like to use it for whole chickens cooked with no added liquid at all. I only use a crockpot when I'm in NZ, you'll have to reinvent the dish, as I'm hazy on the details, but the texture of chicken cooked this way means that it's great cold in the next day's lunchbox. However, since it's simply steaming in its own moisture, it needs judicious seasoning in the first place.

Now that is one breakfast that I couldn't say "snap" to! Looks great. And a guy making amazake...there's something very cute about that. I seem to remember that Hiroyuki posted about the same type of peanut senbei you showed - and they're a favorite of my husband's, too. They always seem to be on the fuddy-duddy shelf of the snack corner, yet those who try them always seem to come back for more! I just found those france-pan snacks recently (kids were home early studying for exams...). Haven't tried the caramel one you had, but the butter one seemed better than the sugar flavor, for your future reference! If your kakeibo has made it as far as March, you're already an expert. I don't know why they don't just sell a "January-only" edition for those who know themselves!