helenjp

What a surprise! I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your cooking, your blog gets regular visits from me.

I have a feeling that the peanuts + butter approach may be rather new, I don't recall seeing it 10-20 years ago - but sanrensho's right, suddenly it's all over the net! So somebody saw the word "butter" and reverse engineered...but with the image of peanut cream in mind? I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was so fascinated when I found the recipe that sanrensho probably saw that I searched the ingredients again under "peanut cream" and "handmade"...heh heh, there it was, somebody saying that they made the recipe from that site, BUT the person refers to it as a "recipe for peanut cream". The truth will out! The use of egg reminds me of "kaya" coconut jam, though I think that uses whole egg. And I guess that without the egg, kaya is a bit like a certain type of peanut cream that I used to see sometimes, that was peanut flour suspended in mizu-ame - almost like liquid peanut taffy. And I think that there is a similar type of peanut jam in China? But that peanut butter/solid shortening peanut cream stuff may be unique to Japan.

Niki no Kashi Chain of stores centering on Ameyoko/Ueno, but also elsewhere in Tokyo, Chiba and Saitama. Google Map location of Ameyoko store Our local one has been open a year, and has all the usual suspects, plus wholemeal rye flour, and things I can't find in other places like Kaldi or liquor wholesalers. Examples: Chinese/southeast Asian shrimp past, SAF yeast, big bags of raw almonds, spearmint rather than peppermint tea, etc. Not to mention enough dried squid legs and confectionery for my family to nickname the store "Nikibi no Kashi" (Zit Confectionery).

Roden's book also has a pumpkin jam in it, which I make quite often (at least, it's in the old edition that I have). Christopher Columbus apparently brought squash(es) back to Europe. Same site lists Egypt as one of the biggies in terms of cultivation. Thanks for the link, markemorse, signing off and heading for chickpeas and pressure-cooker right now!

Isn't it in a recipe book because it's different from commercial peanut butter? Perhaps the lecithin in the eggyolk is supposed to emulsify the fats a bit. I feel so deceived - here I thought this topic was going to be about how weird it is to have sugar in peanut butter! I live in Japan's peanut heartland, and can occasionally buy a tasty but very amateurishly packaged peanut/kinako or peanut/sesame butters, which deserve better than backroom production. Easy to make at home though, using whatever proportions appeal. And if you *have* to use sugar, Japanese kuro-zatou (black sugar) suits peanut butter!

For Japanese kakuni of pork belly: RecipeGullet Recipe for Buta no Kakuni I think I might use raw sugar (nearest to Japanes "zarame") and perhaps increase the sake to 1 cup, or add 1/4 c of mirin. Since Japanese pork belly is eaten at room temperature often, it should ideally not get hard when cold. Best way to do that is to preboil it with a cup or two of okara (tofu lees), or failing that, the starchy water from rinsing rice - but okara is much more effective. After simmering for 30 minutes, or pressure-cooking for 15-20 minutes, rinse off the okara, and then simmer as usual with seasonings. Once cooked, allow to cool for a while in the broth, then pull out the meat, and reduce the broth till just a little syrupy, pour over the kaku-ni to serve if you wish.

That's the problem right there! No problem at all with SMALL bags of frozen azuki beans. So, these are boiled soft? If they don't have much/any water, defrost, (drain off water if necessary), weigh. To make bean jam - let's assume that the boiled beans weigh around 3 times as much in total as the dry beans did. The proportions should be sugar: dried beans 7:10 500g / 1 lb boiled azuki beans 100g-120g / 3-4 oz sugar (scant half cup) pinch salt Stir (wooden spoon) beans and sugar together over low-mod heat till sugar melts, then bubble over moderate heat until mixture is thick enough that you can draw the spoon through the mixture and see the bottom of the pot before the mixture flows back. Spread out onto a big plate to cool rapidly, will keep around 1 week in refrigerator, or freeze to store unused portions. Fried pies or oven turnovers: Peel 1 -2 sweet potatoes (roughly a pound) thickly, rinse well, simmer till soft, mash or smash into rough cubes, mix in around 50g / 2 oz sugar, make jam or candy slightly as for bean jam above. Cool. Prepare pastry, add a dab each of sweet potatoes and bean jam, fry or bake. Bite in carefully - just as dangerous as hot apple turnovers. Other uses for this rough and ready bean jam: "Dorayaki" beanjam-filled pancakes - make smallish hotcakes, just before turning, dab bean jam onto almost set top, and place another almost-set pancake on top, press gently to flatten, cook a little longer, turn, continue cooking. There is a special recipe for the pancakes, but the idea works very well with ordinary pancakes too. Bean jam icecream: soften some vanilla icecream and mix in some bean jam. Serve with a drizzle of muscovado sugar syrup. An-pan: Make a slightly sweet bread dough with milk, take small amounts and pat into disks, put a small ball of bean jam in the middle, enclose in the dough, place to rise with the seam well-closed and facing down, bake mod. oven with an egg-glaze and white poppyseed sprinkled center top of each bun. My use-up list: Every winter, my kids want instant corn soup in single serve sachets, and complain if we run out. Then one day, they suddenly decide that it's spring, and refuse to drink even one more cup.

I decided to replace my very old mandoline with a ceramic-bladed one...I don't really even need to finish writing this post, do I? Do I know better than to mandoline eryngi mushrooms, without the handguard, and without looking at what I'm doing, but instead watching a pot of deepfrying saba bananas? Yeah, I know better... The whole idea was to save time so I could get back to work...instead, I've spent days trying to type flat-tack with a swolllen, sensitive, bandaged up thumb. I will certainly be looking for kevlar gloves, armor-plate gauntlets etc. Wonder if any brands have extra-large sizes? (Gloves always too short in the fingers and generally too small).

Sounds wonderful! Sounds like a lot, too, despite your talk of starting small! In NZ, we normally just let squash and watermelon runners grow as long as they want, which is not much of a problem if you have plenty of land, because the bigger vine will suck in enough nutrition for the fruit it sets. However, if you want to ensure lots of squash or melon pinch out the tip of the main vine when you have 3-4 strong side-runners, as they are the fruiting arms.

The impression I get from Japan/Korea is that it's not so much the amount of liquid or drying, but a matter of preference for one of the two products resulting from the fermentation of squid or fish or shrimp in liquid. Once it's fermented and matured, it is strained...producing a solid fermented product and a fermented fishy brine. Over time, it looks as if different regions have favored one rather than the other. The same is true of miso and other fermented bean pastes vs. soy sauce (which is strained off the fermenting bean paste).

Thanks for the tenpos link. That looks extremely useful. My oven recovered after about a week of inaction, but I think I will be shopping for a new one fairly soon. I'm taken by the call system gadgets which you use to beep people to come up to the counter and collect their order. We could use a few in my house . Fish grills - what I wrote was a bit misleaading, you only need a very little water, don't even have to fully cover the bottom. John, I have to admit I'd get a microwave before a rotisserie, because the 5am bento rush is much easier with a microwave (I've tested, and cooked food packed cold from the fridge is still colder at lunchtime than reheated food, even in winter). The rack positions are a big decision-maker for me - I inherited my oven, and have found the single position extremely limiting. Flicking through brochures, I see that nothing under 20L oven capacity really has good oven functions. I notice that manufacturers don't really explain their oven functions in detail, apart from the latest gimmick. So some ovens seem to use convection, but it's not mentioned in the brochure. I think Prasantrin's idea of getting a commercial oven is best for people who use their ovens a fair amount. I remember a serviceman gasping and saying "But...I bet you used this oven EVERY DAY!" That gave me a good idea of how much use the big "kaden" (whiteware) makers expects their ovens to get.

Why don't you take a look at the eGullet Chili Cook-off - lots of variations, with discussions on personal preferences. If you don't find something to jog your memory, you should find something to fire your imagination, anyway!

These Vittles Vaults hold 40 or 60 lbs??? And stackable? Wow, would my floor hold up? I really like the design though, and will see if I can't get hold of that or something similar. My containers now are all stacked up...have to move x number of 15-lb or more containers to get to the one on the bottom...always the one on the bottom...

That chkubeza looks like some type of mallow - looks like Malva sylvestris? We have that in Japan too, but it is not traditionally used for food here, I think. We have a related mallow of the "althaea" type in Japan that has been a food plant for a long time, though not much used now. It's great to see such an old plant still in common use!

It has a protein content of 12% - so it's moderately high in gluten. Try to match it with something with a similar protein content, or blend flours. What type of bread are you making? Flours from domestic (Japanese) wheat tend to be around 11-12% (the standard supermarket brand, Super Camellia, is 11.5%). French bread flours sold here are usually 10-11% protein; good bread flours are usually over 13% protein, very occasionally up to 15%, if that's any guide. Flours used with Japanese natural yeast seem to be on the lower end, 11-12% protein. If you are using a flour with less protein, you may need less water to mix, and conversely, you may need more liquid than the recipe suggests if your flour has more protein. Flour comparison using different flours. Ougonzuru (Ohgonzuru) bread is the photo second from the left, in the second row down (next to OPERA). Baking notes are very positive, citing good rise and nice aroma/flavor.

I posted these a while back, but here's my sad truth... Floor plan The other end of this room houses the dining table. It's actually the largest room in the house, and a Japanese real estate would call it not just a kitchen, and not just a "dining-kitchen", but a "living-dining-kitchen". Unfortunately it has 4 doors off it, and a lot of through-traffic. 30cm = roughly 1 foot, so the main counter/stove area is 265 cm across (less than 3 yards), and most of that is gas range or sinks, so my counter space is just under 80cm, or around 2 1/2 feet. Husband in kitchen (photo shows counter area on left of floor plan above).

We had a house like that...in one of my bedtime story sagas. I'm not telling you the name, in case you run off and sell the movie rights out from under me! The scanner inventory system...elder son has been nagging me for nearly 2 years to buy him the necesary hardware to set up just such a system. I'm with the people who want either their counters or their floors to rise and sink on demand. It's painful for me to wash dishes at a Japanese-height counter and sink. And what about those useless under-floor storage cabinets? Why can't they REALLY not get moldy? Not so very hard, surely.

I was just looking at a friend's Sharp steam oven the other day...most of the steam ovens in Japan are not plumbed in or out at all - there's a removable tray for collecting condensate, and water supply is canister style. She did say that it required more ventilation space than regular ovens (which are often counter-top models here), but hadn't actually noticed more exhaust air/steam whn using the oven. That may be why you haven't had many replies - what type of oven are you actually looking at? And what kind of steam ovens are other people using/considering?

I do use it when I can't find decent baking powder here - no great difference, but be careful not to be heavy-handed with baking soda, as it can be bitter in mild-flavored cakes.

It was some post from 2003 in this thread that set me off...I think I used this recipe I found on the Internet - a couple of places list it in much the same form. That recipe has equal quantities of grain alcohol, sugar, and milk (2.25 cups each) plus zest and de-pithed fruit of one lemon, and half a vanilla bean. Half a vanilla bean is not too little - it's really dominant. It might even be worth removing it after about 3 days (if you can find it!). I also think it might be worth making with less sugar - if it was a ladies' drink, maybe it was always meant to be diluted, but even so, it's pretty sweet. It could also do with a boost in the aroma department. Wondering what the history of the drink is - does it predate the vanilla boom of the late 19th century, and if so, what aromatics did peoplel use before they started using vanilla? Still thinking about that one...maybe something discreet like lemon balm or lemon verbena? Time for the micro-batch experimental mode!

That made me laugh! I'm looking forward to your joyous experiences in Taiwan, too - an acquaintancewho used to go to Taiwan regularly on business maintained that Chinese food in Taiwan was better than anywhere else she knew. Those "egg-white egg tarts" took me by surprise. I've never seen them before, and now wonder if it's part of some massive egg-tart revoution that's passed me by, or just an aberration. Did you see them anywhere else in HK?

I met my friend with dairy connections incognito in a dark corner of the Internet...and she confirmed that the big manufacturers are not at present making cultured butters. I asked her where she bought her cultured butter, but I should have known better: she makes her own. I plan to ask more about that, but meanwhile, look at this tempting step-by-step on the process! Making Cultured Butter

Ilana - we have the same name (basically...)! I loved the sight of that bread, thank you! You say that it dries out quickly, and I wondered...I know (from Japanese bread) that it is possible to make bread that never exactly "dries" out, and never goes moldy, so why do you think this slightly dry bread is popular in Israel? English bread isn't incredibly dry, since it mostly has butter on it - is Israeli bread a little drier so that it is better for "wet" toppings or dipping into things? What kind of bread did you buy yesterday, and how did you use it? Also, what kind of flour is used for the big loaves - and is it mostly domestically produced, or mostly imported? Just curious!

Hiroyuki, are there certain vegetables or other ingredients which "should" go into the nabe for anko nabe? And what about the dipping sauce or other condiments? I made a New Year's resolution LAST year to seek out more local specialties, and monkfish is definitely part of the Chiba/Ibaraki repertoire...but I've never made/eaten it. I'd appreciate some tips to get me started before the monkfish disappear from the shops in springtime.

Ways with monkfish liver spotted recently... - monkfish ramen (slice of cooked liver on top of the ramen, usual ramen accompaniments such as nori, green onion). - monkfish liver with monkfish liver dressing - old standby: steamed monkfish liver, sliced, dressed with citrus/soy sauce and daikon grated together with a dried chili - monkfish liver with crisp and slightly pongy vegetables such as celery, cutting celery, udo, and the like.