helenjp

That's interesting - it's been years since I last made it, but I remember thinking then that maybe the karin I used weren't ripe enough, as they weren't highly fragrant. Yesterday I got one for the proverbial song - maybe past it's best, but the fragrance when I cut into it was wonderful. Here's hoping...

Yes, I thought of gojiru too, but it's not thick like that. How did your father like his gojiru? Any ingredients that go particularly well with it?

I find it's difficult to get enough freezer space to store entire ready-to-eat dishes, so I freeze things like meat/chicken/fish in a marinade, or very tiny meatballs that can be quickly tossed into soup or pasta. If you eat miso soup, you can mix the miso with cut vegetables and freeze them in appropriate sizes, reheat in Japanese stock and you're done! Vegetables like negi and cabbage actually taste better that way than freshly prepared. Mix some fine shaved bonito into your miso/vegetable wad and you can even make your soup with hot water instead of dashi. Consider things like frozen sandwiches that will be easy to grill and eat with one hand in desperate moments...and go easy on ketchup...I'm embarrassed to recall how my first baby's bald head looked after I'd finished yet another meal trying to eat with him always wide awake and on my lap! laugh:

Karin liqueur: 5 parts karin fruit 10 parts shochu or white liquor 1 part rock sugar or honey Karin need to be dead ripe - yellow, and starting to develop brown spots. Wash and dry fruit, cut out brown spots, but don't peel or remove seeds. Halve or quarter depending on size, and cut chunks or slices into a clean jar, layering with sugar or pouring honey over, and add liquor. Karin Honey Preserves method. Both the liqueur and the honey extract are drunk in hot water for sore throats...or to ward off the possibility of a sore throat... .

Cauliflower and negi (Japanese dividing onions) miso soup with soy milk. Take care to get the plain type, not the sweetened, vanilla-flavored type . For 4 people 1/2 - 1 head of cauliflower, depending on size. Divide flowerets finely and chop up stem parts, soak in water for a while. 1 negi, trimmed and cut in very short lengths. Simmer till tender in about 800ml (roughly 4 cups) dashi. It will reduce somewhat, don't worry about that. Dissolve 4 tbs of miso into soup, add 150-200ml soy milk (that is, roughly 1 cup). Heat through, but don't allow to even simmer. I've tried miso soups with milk in them, and hated them all, but the soy milk seemed much less obtrusive. Mild and comforting!

I was just wondering what non-sweet uses there might be for this! Can you give me more details on recipes to use with this?

The improved workability is something I've noticed with aged lebkuchen/gingerbread dough too. I usually age it 1-2 weeks, though closer to 2 weeks is better.

I finally figured out how to use mine up, since nobody wanted to eat it fresh! I made a tamago-toji with tofu, shiitake, and mitsuba. Now it's all gone!

This is so sad, but my kitchen floor would need extensive cleanup before a Roomba were let loose in there. Otherwise it would vanish under something, and never be seen again! Lots of people put hot saucepans etc on their floors in Japanese kitchens, because there is just nowhere else to put them. My hot saucepans are joined by jars of pickles, a bucket holding tall vegetables like burdock, dividing onions etc, overflow from my recipe bookcase, vacuum-seal boxes of dry goods, rice etc., condiment overflow from under the sink (got taken over by pickles too)...there are small paths here and there, which I like to think give a kind of rural air, as if herds of secretive forest creatures passed that way unnoticed by me, rustling the pickle jars as they pass!

Kaldi sometimes has cider (a French brand, was it???).

Just tearing out door...I believe they can grow to 15 feet and maybe more, but more likley half that. Since they are hardy, they are often grown in exposed areas and so don't grow to their full height, but in a warm area with rich soil, of course they may surprise you! Yellow leaves - sounds like chlorosis - use a fertilizer for acid-loving plants or specifically for citrus.

Now I have to try some kawahagi sashimi to find out! I think that kawahagi is pretty much in season now, while hirame is not in peak season (??). Hiroyuki, you're welcome to buy fish off the boats in my home town, if any are still in business these days, but one reason fish is mostly cheap where I grew up is that it has a particular environment that only suits certain fish - we get plenty of those, but not much of any other varieties. Japan is quite different, since there are quite different currents on the east and the west, and especially in northern Japan, the currents vary a lot from season to season. One thing I noticed when I first came to Japan (in Shikoku and Osaka, in an area near Kobe) was the big variety of smaller fish that are commercially fished, and how seasonal they were. Fish sellers have changed a lot since then though - hardly any neighborhood fish shops left, for one thing! I realized how rare they'd become when I went to a REALLY "shitamachi" area recently, and saw a fish stall that had absolutely beautiful trays of mixed sashimi ("chrysanthemum"-style squid with centers of salmon - expensive fish of course since it was a cheap area, but still exquisitely presented) laid out alongside with their plastic dishes of whole wet fish - and realized I hadn't seen that type of shop for years where I live.

Saints preserve us! What a meal! By the way, I'm interested to see that you enjoyed the kawahagi cooked better than raw. It's a cheap and popular fish where I come from (called leatherjacket or creamfish in NZ), but never great as sashimi, I think.

I made 4 pies over the weekend, and found many of the hints very useful. (Filling - 1 batch of pork and spices; 1 batch of chicken, bacon, apples, curry spices - the flavor of the pork pies was outstanding, but my family, unused to this type of pie, rather prefered the lighter chicken/apple filling). I'm sure that I didn't knead my pastry smooth on my first attempt, but the kneaded pastry was much more malleable. Cooling the formed crust - I cooled it in an unheated November kitchen for a couple of hours, but the second batch, cooled for a further 1-2 hours, were even more robust. The finished pies were best 2-3 days after baking, when the flavors had mellowed, and the pastry had also softened just a little.

Looks good! The whole meal was tonjiru and rice here!

I have seen the sanma and maybe the curry one, but my son (the one who thinks that fish-sausage is fine in nabemono...) has tried the "grilled eel" one, and also wasabi icecream. The grilled eel one just tasted faintly smoky, sweet, and soy-sauce-y. The wasabi one was ok, but being cold, there really was no flavor apart from the heat and a faint starchiness. Exactly. Barbecued tree. Why not have it salad-style and just bite down on a tree or two on your way to the station in the morning?

This is interesting! I finally decided that in the interests of eGullet research, I needed to buy some of this stuff. So I bought a "Kaze ni Fukarete Tofu-ya Johnny" double-pack of tofu to try....and neither of my kids completely finished theirs. They didn't refuse to eat it, but my husband and I strongly disliked it. It tasted strongly green and beany, so maybe they use undried, green soybeans? (Disclaimer: I have a mild allergy to soybeans which is most evident with green "eda-mame", so I'm not an impartial judge!) To be honest, the impression I had from the aftertaste was not so much the "extra-thick soymilk" the manufacturers claim to use, as the impression that soybean oil had been mixed into the soymilk. That's only my impression, but if I were going to splash out on expensive tofu, I'd rather buy fresh yuba any day.

To be honest, I think you'd get more enjoyable results from using them whole or broken in a stuffing or cake etc. I have made chestnut puree from scratch, starting by cooking raw, peeled chestnuts slowly in milk, and even then, it was hard to get the final puree absolutely smooth - tasted good though. I can't help thinking that starting with chestnuts cooked by a dry method will make it hard to get the results you want.

I bought my "good" knives in Sakai, and can't think of a better place to go shopping! What a huge display - was there much (any) labeling and documentation available in English?

Rona, find a real butchery and ask for "tonsoku" (pig foot) or even "tonkotsu" (pork bones). If you tell them you will come back the next day if they prefer, it makes their life easier. In any case, they may have to order the trotter(s) in for you. A Japanese site mentions ordering them, and getting a small bag with about 500g of trotters, split vertically. Your latest link mentions chicken and pork together - that sounds good.

This is shameful! I notice that I was impressed last year, and did nothing about it then either! I see Adam says to let the completed and filled piecrust cool and harden before baking. From what I vaguely remember of drunkenly lurching pies, that sounds like a good tip. I think I probably also tried to thin the crust too much. Darn it, a person's honor is at stake, pie must be made!

Not really - because the dashi is super-concentrated, so I can add 1 tab water per egg if I want a softer omelet. Keeping the dashi very concentrated so that there is a high proportion of sugar in the seasoning mix means that it keeps better in the fridge. 1 tsp of mix means about (very, very roughly) 1 pinch of sugar per egg. No konbu in the seasoning mix, because it doesn't keep well. I do use it to make dashi-maki from scratch, instead of using the mix. And absolutely NO photos!! Bento-making happens before 6 am, don't forget! If I want to make a dashi-maki and I know I'll be in a hurry, I mix everything, including eggs, the night before and keep it in the fridge all ready to cook the next morning, but obviously the raw eggs/dashi/seasoning mix won't keep more than overnight. Tomorrow's bento...the rest of that hunk of pork, sliced up with cooked lima beans and greens and dressed with mustard vinaigrette (so un-Japanese), and probably a rolled omelet with torn nori rolled into it. Maybe some simmered maitake fungi with a little chopped scallion. Using the bento boxes with insulated rice pots now, and as they are rather deep, I often put a little furikake halfway up, add the rest of the rice, and top with pickles. One good thing about using the timer on the rice cooker is that the overnight soaking suits okowa (sticky rice/sweet rice) with beans or other tasty additions. It's not only tasty, it stays softer than regular rice when cold in the winter months. To be frugal, cut with 1/3 to 1/2 regular rice!

You're supposed to keep umeshu in the fridge? I thought one of the great things about these infused spirits is that you can take your time drinking them - no pressure to finish the entire 3 liter container of home-made umeshu in one go!

I tried making this years and years ago, but had considerable trouble getting it to hold a shape - would you consider doing a tutorial, please?

Hmmm...so if the tip is mandatory, why wouldn't they simply raise prices and wages and eliminate the "tipping" element from the check? Or would people simply feel that prices had been raised for no reason?