helenjp

To mellow the feijoa, or to mellow the Japan experience?!

Don 't worry, the Japanese media is more than equal to the challenge of giving as good as it gets in that department! However, I try not to worry too much about it, as I am sure that for everybody who worries about having a PC refrigerator, many others suddenly feel curious about the reality behind all the fuss, and head for the library, the bookshop, the internet, their foreign neighbors, the ethnic groceries and restaurants...

The ultimate bento scam - but I'm sure that any hardened bento maker has thought of that already! Kobayashi Kazuyo Obentou Kimatta!Here seems to be a rewrite/re-issue of my first and favorite bentou book, "Obentou-zukuri Hiketsu-shuu". Her bentology is not fancy, but it works. Her cooking is definitely Showa style. Her mottos are "Does it taste good cold?" and "Is it easy to eat?" (E.g., make soboro a little moister than usual). She suggests things like arranging food on top of rice if you don't have as much as usual, or layering simple things like torn nori and flavored katsuo-flakes with rice if worse comes to worst. I haven't read them, but you might take a look at the "Chou Haya! Bentou de Maji-uma Lunch" or "Kihon no Bentou", both from Orange Page, or the Lettuce Club equivalent "Speed Bentou - Nemutai Asa no Tsuyoi Mikata". However, do not be deceived the tantalizing titles - check your local bookshop and make sure that they really deliver what they promise. I see that the series the "Chou Haya!" mook belongs to has been on the top shelves of the magazine stands for months and months, so it must sell. The two rules of bento making are 1) throw away all shame, instant dashi and frozen eda-mame have their place; and 2) if you or your child have a bento and nobody misses their train, the bento was a success! The Top Ten Bitter Fruits of Bento Experience! 1. Plan what you will make if you forget to cook the rice one day. (Freeze sandwiches, keep one pack of retort rice for emergencies, etc. etc.) 2. Yesterday's dinner is today's bento, never doubt that for a second. Familiarize yourself with 3 bento-oriented recipes for every common foodstuff, e.g. EGG = pajeon, atsuyaki, soboro) and despair will never have you in its clutches! 3) Buy a book on okazu (side dishes) for the microwave and force yourself to use it. Buy some tiny silicon or paper molds - atsuyaki can be microwaved or toasted using the timer just as well as when you stand over it in a pan. Well actually, it's not the same, but it will do. 4) Fried things from the night before (or in winter, even freshly made) can get hard and unappetizing in cold, dry weather. Bring ketchup, sauce, and a little water/sake - or soy, mirin/sugar, vinegar, ginger and a very little cornstarch - to the boil and quickly toss the fried objects round in it before draining. 5) Boil salted salmon instead of grilling it...don't overboil it, and add a little sake to the water, but it's fast, and it's less greasy to eat. Lots of things are perfectly tasty boiled in boring old water. Allowing carrots or sweet potatoes to cool in the cooking water just a little prevents the surface from drying out too much when drained. 6) Asazuke and momizuke (make in morning) for no-cook vegetables. 7) Frozen dishes get boring and are often left forgotten in the freezer, but frozen scallions (or even better, wakegi) chopped and frozen, or dried shiitake soaked, squeezed and frozen sliced or whole, frozen sliced aburage etc are versatile and can be tossed into dishes without thawing first. 8) Instead of either panfrying or deepfrying everything, grill and drop into a marinade (yaki-zuke). Soy sauce and vinegar is the basic start, but you can make it spicy or herby or sweet, whatever you like. 9) "Well begun is half done!" When you buy fish or meat for bento, cut it up and stick it in small ziploc bags with a littlesalt or soy, sake and your choice of ginger/curry powder/yuzu-kosho/mustard/negi/shichimi etc. Pat dry and fry or grill, or make a nimono. 10) Use containers you like. I like bento boxes with separate lidded containers or drop-in boxes. I buy two or more the same, so I can sometimes have a ready-made item in its container in the fridge or freezer, ready to add to the bento box. Lidded containers mean that you can send fruit or desserts that you don't want to get mixed up with savory food, or sloppy dishes that would normally make the rice soggy, or leak. P.S. Everybody hates making bento at some point, especially Friday and Monday mornings, but what I hate most is having a kid say at 10pm on Friday night that they need a bento by 6am the next morning. .

Just a guess, but try adding a clean, dry eggshell (peel off membrane) or two, wrapped in gauze. That's what I use to make crisp umeboshi (Japanese salted plums). You could try crushing calcium tablets (health store, pharmacy)? I was thinking that it must be possible to make them with whey and see that somebody else thought of it before me: Noursishing traditions recipe However, I don't know if there is enough whey in that recipe to provide sufficient calcium to make the pickles really crisp.

Yup, could never walk past that detergent bottle without taking a swig! So you think it's a mixer rather than something to drink with water or ice? Pat, I can imagine it would go well with quinces - and apples too? Manuka honey could be good, too, it certainly has enough aroma. Now that I think about it, it seems odd that more people in Australia and NZ don't make infused vodkas themselves. Since fruit or herb spirits are quite common in Japan, I've made them for a while, and find that you can leave out the sugar completely if you are willing to mature the spirits much longer. Wonder if manuka (tea tree) leaves themselves wouldn't make an interesting tipple? I'd dry them a little before infusing, I think...(one of these days I'm going to poison myself experimenting with food and drink!).

"Teaching" approximation is something I've seen in Japanese cooking magazines (especially the ones which have an "education" slant) more than in recipe books. Examples: showing handfuls of certain ingredients - e.g. a small handful of these vegetables or a double handful of those vegetables, this much in a cup is 100g. Also useful was a "pinch" feature - pinching between thumb and 1 finger vs. thumb and 2-3 fingers. If you check yourself once, you can get quite accurate results for ingredients where you want to be accurate in small amounts (baking soda) or where you want to stay within certain limits (salt). That strikes me as more useful and realistic than the Japanese baking recipes which solemenly tell you to add 2g of cinnamon (digital scales are that accurate, and Japanese recipes for toaster ovens are that small, but still...). I guess the point of measuring oil for a saute is that you tend to be too generous if you just upend your friendly home oil-container over your pan! Aren't they just trying to remind you that you really only need a small amount?

Thanks for responding! I was wondering if that fragrance comes through or not.

Thanks a lot for that post - that really looks like a fine selection of fish! Never heard the term "nanban-ebi" before. As for the white fish comment, when I came to Tokyo after spending a couple of years in Osaka, I was surprised at how little attention white fish get up here! It's as if nobody knows the sea contains anything but tuna. I was a little surprised to sea red gurnard on "your" coast, but I suppose these days fish have wheels like everybody else! Domestic Goddess, what is in the dish at the back of your photo? Pickles? (She says hopefully!)

The report that v. gautam linked to is probably not related to import bans, since none of the companies does much (maybe even any?) export trade. I haven't found anything in English or Japanese regarding this, but it's possibly some kind of tariff or quota cap - Japan and the US have been jostling over import and export of "sensitive" agricultural products for a while, and dairy seems to be part of this. Both Japan and the US have if anything ramped up subsidization of domestic milk producers, so I imagine that the status quo will be with us for a while yet. It may be that fermented milk products come under a separate heading from fresh or processed milk. However, there seem to be two issues involved - one is the use of ersatz, inferior, or past consume-by date ingredients, and consequent false labeling. I haven't actually looked into this, but apart from the scandal, I'm not sure how much "bite" the relevant regulations have traditionally had in Japanese law (I'm sure they are tighter now than they were). The other issue is a problem which I've seen raised on the pastry board here - products which are frozen for later shipping/retailing as "freshly made" produce. This second issue seems to stem from food industry regulations and labeling practices which don't really have a realistic and clear policy on "frozen to sell fresh" products.

I try to take dinners to a family friend who has diabetes, as it is hard for him to make food that suits both himself and his teenage son. ...it was not too hard when he was simply on medication, but it is VERY HARD now that he is on dialysis. I really can't cook confidently for him without specialized advice from a hospital nutrition consultant. As an outsider, it's not really my right to comment, but it looks as if any effort that keeps a diabetic from needing dialysis is totally worth it. Japanese nabe are almost ideal, though - a hot pot of water or broth has seafood or finely sliced meats, tofu, vegetables cooked in it by diners who pull out what they want, and dip it in a sharp mixture of soy sauce and citrus juice, adjusted to individual tastes with chili paste, sesame seeds, spring onions, etc etc. Finish by spooning some of the broth over a small bowl of rice (the rice will swell in the broth), or cooking some udon noodles or beanthread vermicelli in the hot pot of broth. Since it is a tasty way to eat pale vegetables like Chinese cabbage or beansprouts, it seems to be a good dish even for dialysis patients who have to watch their mineral intake, and for regular diabetics or pre-diabetics, it is a healthy but tasty way of eating, and one that doesn't require you to forego what everybody else is eating. Good luck!

A book targeted to Indonesians, Japanese, etc. would naturally not be written in English, but cookbooks written in English about any country's cooking are very likely to be read by people outside their home country. That includes the US, but of course, how authors and publishers feel about that is a slightly different issue. I would search out baking books by Berenbaum rather than other authors because I know her books will have the information I need - and if I lived in New Zealand and ran a bookstore, it would be her books and not Mr Sticka Budda's books that I would import. However, whether authors and publishers pursue the market for imported books in other English-speaking or English-using countries or not is up to them. No cookbook published in the US even targets everybody living in the US, so I don't think "everybody on the planet" is the most realistic comparison! .

I don't think there's much difference or disagreement on handling of countable items like onions or cloves of garlic - if only because the dishes they appear in probably aren't sensitive to a 10% difference in the amount of onion used. For example, if a recipe for meatloaf stated "1 cup of chopped onion", we all know that the volume will change according to how finely the onion was chopped - so a volume measurement in this case tells me that the exact amount isn't critical. However...a Japanese potato is much smaller than a potato in NZ, and the same is true for eggplants. Japanese onions, on the other hand, tend to be bigger than in NZ, and our apples are mammoth...some kind of volume or weight measurement would certainly help. You mentioned non-US cooks and non-US cookbooks - I take it you meant cookbooks for food we were familiar with...but there's also the fact that English is a convenient language for cookbook writers from many cuisines. Indonesians sometimes call something the size of a shallot "onion", but that is a very different amount of onion compared to a US or a Japanese onion, and you would have to know about Indonesian food before you could get good results from a cookbook written in English that stated simply "1 onion". I imagine (sorry!) that some American writers and publisher produce cookbooks with the same mindset that an Indonesian publisher producing a cookbook in Bahasa Indonesia has - but (some, not all) English cookbooks are used by people who have never seen an American kitchen. It depends on what you perceive your market or audience to be.

Mango-shaped fruit - yes, you've found it! And which animal does the science teacher think brought the marmelo to Japan in the first place?!

Area characteristics: Seafood, especially blowfish, crab, and whale (though reviews of places reputed to serve whale didn't mention??) Traditionally strong Chinese and Korean population, probably still relatively more Chinese and Korean restaurants Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (noodles with pancake, fried egg, etc - cheap treat!) Expensive restaurants: Fukumasa banquet style, 8,000 to 12,000 per person blowfish menus as above and up to 21,000 per person Fujinoya Couldn't find menu prices sorry, not more than Fukumasa and maybe more reasonable, was my impression, but no guarantees! Seafood and sake - I think they serve a local sake and maybe also feature in cooking (couldn't find the place where I originally read that). Suigun no Sato On the expensive side, but this is my "blind pick". 10" walk from station Seafood, including whale, fish prepared from in-house aquarium (this usually means "odori" or quivering-fresh preparation). Moderate, on-the-run etc. Saijo station seems to have quite a range of restaurants, some with good reviews. Above all, ask hotel staff, business contacts, etc. Manten Local dishes and sake, along the main drag in front of the station Keyaki Family-run restaurant featuring local produce and local dishes. 5" walk from station Asahi Beer Garden 6 minutes by taxi from the station, a Japanese beer garden is a great experience, the only drawback in my view would be the Asahi beer...but that may be my NZ prejudice, as their beers are usually light and dry, and may suit US tastes well.

What Rona says! Some of the larger old-style cookers tended to produce overcooked and dried-out rice if you tried to cook much under 2.5 cups, but my new cooker, while the same size, cooks a small batch of 1.5 cups quite well.

Rona, I #think* neither of those are marmelo - too round, and not fuzzy?! The second one...hmmm...maybe karin, but are there spines on the branches? I couldn't say why the fruit seem small - but from memory, boke fruit are smaller than karin, so it the tree has spines, it might be "boke", which is less harsh-tasting than karin - go straight for the "jelly" option! Jason, nashi-oroshi sounds great. I don't see recipes for nashi-shochu, which makes me wonder if the aroma is too faint or volatile, but single-serve shochu is great for small experiments like this! Nashi seemed to be very expensive this year.

Recipe for taralli on my blog, which I started by way of making some of my recipes available, and which must be the least-updated blog in cyberspace. There must be more authentic recipes out there, but I do know that this one works!

I spent ages looking for this thread yesterday... Potato blog in Japanese, for the truly obsessed. According to MAFF, Japanese potato varieties, in terms of area under cultivation, ranked as follows in 2003: Spring crop: Danshaku (30%), Konafubuki (18%), Toyoshiro, May Queen (120% approx. each), Nishi-Yutaka (5%) Fall crop: Dejima, Nishi-Yutaka (40% approx. each), Nourin-1go, May Queen (5% approx. each) Dejima is a floury, creamy-white potato with good flavor, Nourin-1go is grayish-white, and average in texture and flavor (largely used for non-food purposes). Nishi-yutaka is a relative of Dejima, developed for double-cropping and the spring new potato market. Kona-fubuki is used to make potato starch, and while it disintegrates too easily to be good for stews etc., it makes good croquettes and dumplings. (Almost all the red-skinned white-fleshed potatoes seem to be good for croquettes or mash - if you find Beni-maru etc, grab them!). Elsewhere, I see that the new Kita-Murasaki is maybe not as desirable as the Inca Purple - the potatoes are smaller and crop earlier, but didn't score as highly in flavor. Kita Murasaki may disintegrate less easily when boiled, though not a great choice for frying. Inca Red is a salad potato, Inca Purple is more versatile. Red-skinned Star Ruby looks like a good boiling potato, possibly better than Danshaku, and not as likely to disintegrate when boiled. Inca no Mezame's main point seems to be very early harvest, but it scored highly in flavor, and is particularly recommended for frying. ..meanwhile, may I recommend potato pastry...easy and tasty topping for pot pies etc! I'm considering a satsuma-imo version.

FoodZealot's blog on Doguyasan-Suji which is the kitchenware area of Osaka (nearest station maybe Namba??). I don't know when their New Year holiday will be, but they should be BUSTLING at the very end of the year - and Osaka being Osaka, food will never be far away where people gather. Japan Times mention of the Chinese-style Buddhist vegetarian temple cuisine served at the restaurant attached to the Manpukuji (or Mampukuji) temple. It handily mentions that the restaurant is only closed Dec 31/Jan1. I think you need to book at least a week in advance though, or even ASAP if you wanted to eat there. It's expensive but unique. You can also get bento (also order in advance) versions. Access from Osaka would be from the JR Nara line.

...or you can serve HALF a nikuman for a meal, like somebody I know! Butter: I think it is better than it used to be. There was a time when butter here was very obviously older than the production date suggested. If I can get it, I like Yotsuba butter. There are a lot of new potato cultivars being trotted out onto the market recently, but only a few of them seem to have a noticeably different texture or flavor. Getting back to street foods, maybe I'm not hanging out on the streets late at night enough these days, but I think there are fewer and fewer yatai out there. Near my local station, there are takoyaki occasionally, and yakitori and oden most of the time. We used to joke that the "tako" in takoyaki was the "tako" (idiot) who bought it and was "cooked" (cheated), despite the absence of "tako" (octopus) in the takoyaki!

I could swear that there's a revival goin' on out thar in the woods! I'm seeing more of these, especially this year. They really do cook nicely, though they don't get pulpy like Granny Smiths. I simmered some with a few cheap figs, and the red color in the skins leached prettily into the flesh. They also kept their flavor, and just enough acidity, when cooked.

Kaga cuisine might very well be better in winter (and if it isn't, it's a good area for sake...). My parents made a trip round that area and up the Noto peninsula in midwinter, in 1990. They stayed in smaller minshuku (private guesthouses) and enjoyed a lot of good family-style food). The only problem they had was snow delaying trains, which meant that the time and sometimes platform was changed, and not speaking Japanese, they weren't sure if they were catching the right train or not. Recent winters have been warm and not very snowy - winter was predicted to be cool this year, current predictions are for "average" rather than warm, but who knows? Going shopping at New Year might be fun in itself. Also, you will see plenty of interest at the local shrines and temples, without braving the crowds at the major destinations. If I were in Kyoto at New Year, despite the crowds I would probably head to Matsuo Taisha in Arashiyama to drink o-miki, or new year's sake, always served there on New Year's Day, as the shrine deity's special province is the brewing of sake. It wasn't terribly crowded when I went, over 25 years ago, but I can't say what it would be like now. Near Arashiyama is the Nintendo headquarters, with an interactive life-size game of hyakunin-isshu (a game where you have to guess the first line of poems by 100 different poets). Matsumoto - there is a castle there which didn't strike me as greater than those in Himeji or Kyushu, but which fascinated my husband as being one of the first castles designed for gun warfare (was that what he said??). It is a small town, definitely less sophisticated than Nagano. All I remember about it is the supermarket... Not far from Matsumoto is Lake Suwa, and near there are some hot springs. It seems like a nice spot to hole up in a hot springs resort over New Year, if you could get a booking - although I've planned to do exactly that for several years, I've never actually got as far as Suwa, so I hope somebody else can tell you whether Suwa, Matsumoto, or some other place is the ideal destination in that area. If you want to try temple cuisine over winter, pack WOOLLY SOCKS for padding round corridors without your shoes in!!! Temples are cold anyway, and since many are on top of mountains, they are particularly chilly. Hokkaido is naturally cold outside, but homes are well-insulated, and much warmer than my home near Tokyo. We spent New Year there a few years back, and I seem to recall that we had sushi delivered for New Year's Day, and there were enough places open from Jan. 2nd to get by.

I've NEVER seen that much octopus in a takoyaki! The cornbread is a first too.

Springform is different - loose-bottom pans are what Anna shows in the link in her post. I think I've only seen one in ?? decades in Japan. They leak if used unlined with runny batters, so tend to come in square shapes for slices etc. They are only worth buying if you bake a lot of slices (they specified a flan tin because it is shallow, so the inside of the pan doesn't steam up - in other words, the base bakes nice and crisp). As prasantin says, wedges are just as good, so a pie dish will do well if you have one in a convenient size. It may break up easily, so stick baking paper under the pastry, allowing enough to hang over the edges and make it easier to remove the slice WHEN COOL ).

Have fun with your new rice cooker! When my last rice cooker sadly passed away, I bought a Zojirushi "pressure" NP-HT18 (different model numbers overseas) and have been very pleased with it. The inner lid is supposed to be removed and cleaned every time, but the lid/vent area stays cleaner than any other rice cooker I've owned. Love the double timer for the same reason Kristin mentions - no need to reset the timer for morning/evening settings. I was surprised to find that I can cook small amounts of rice more easily than I used to be able to in my big rice cooker. As for size, a big rice cooker is an advantage not only for high-volume takikomi rice, but also for okayu, which bubbles up more when cooking and needs more space. It also fits a whole chicken in there if you want to fool it into thinking that it's a big batch of okayu! Microwave rice cookers - I have a dinky plastic one which I use occasionally to make a single bento serving when I've got oatmeal (on the timer) in the rice cooker. It is fast...about 10 mins plus 10 mins sitting time...but for good results, you really need to soak the rice thoroughly in advance. So it has no advantages over a pot for the person who rushes in the door and suddenly thinks they want to be eating rice in 20 minutes' time. That's for Japanese rice, cooked as Japanese like to eat it, with no hardness in the center etc. What it does do (if I take time to soak the rice) effectively is make a small amount of okayu for elderly relatives. There are expensive ceramic microwave rice cookers around at present, but they are very bulky and I have to wonder whether they are really worth it.