helenjp

Mmm - botamochi! I remember my first husband almost missing our reserved seats on the bullet train when he suddenly remembered a favorite wagashi shop near Tokyo Station that sold good botamochi, and just HAD to rush and get one! Hiroyuki, are the stringy things in that nimono zenmai, or yama-kurage, or zuiki, or??? The higan-zakura (taiwan cherries) are flowering here - has the snow melted off your garden yet?

Who would have thought that you would go to Sunshine City! I remember when it opened . As far as the food/fatigue/familiarity thing goes, your experiences are sounding familiar! When much younger, I was surprised at how easily tired and put off my kids were during a few days in Singapore - and even more surprised when they insisted that they had LOVED every minute of it and couldn't wait to go back! I bet your kids remember things like the Hot Vit. C as major highlights .

My rice-cooker almost melted down on me...looking on the bright side, at least I can be quite certain that it's dead! I see that lots of people like the IH cookers. Anybody in Japan like the "pressure" IH cookers? I'm not too keen on a really heavy inner pot, because I use an "isshou-daki" (1.8li) capacity cooker, but would be interested to hear comments on different types of inner pots.

I'm puzzled to read of kitchens that are "too small" to have stuff on counters...I think of mine as "too small" to have stuff in the cupboards . Cupboards hold dry goods, seasonings, cookware. On the sink counter: two Breadmaker and yogurt warmer On the hip-high drawer unit that holds cutlery, bento stuff, tupperware etc: 3 plus This is a sight to behold Bottom layer: microwave/oven and rice cooker. The microwave door is a major prep space.Second layer: a toaster and two large crockery pots for utensils. Third layer (on toaster): kettle full of barley tea and often a small saucepan. So far, three high seems to be the limit! On the table: one Insulated hot-water kettle. I fear for the safety of the neighborhood if I ever replace it with an automatic coffee-maker. Hidden treasures: two On top of the high china cabinet in a box is my Braun multimix, behind the pasta supply. I'm amazed how fast I can get that thing set up! BIG electric griddle/grill/octopus-snack frypan stored under dining table. A real bear to set up or put away, but used frequently. Homeless wanderer: recently purchased pressure cooker...

Glorified Rice, I've heard about the "allergy/addiction" idea, and it certainly seems that low-level allergies are somehow different. There was a report recently on research into the food allergies that are becoming more common in Japan - soy, rice, and something else which I forget - eggs maybe? The report commented that skin tests are not a great predictor of how people react when they eat something. I felt more "awake" when I went on a "reduced starch and sugar diet" which emphasized slow-digesting starches, and suspect that in my case a lot of the improvement was due to eating hardly any rice! Ono Loa, you don't say what kind of brown rice you want to eat! In Japan, "Milky Queen" is very close to a mochi (sticky) rice, and my family prefer it to other brown rice because it cooks up quite soft. However, if you are wanting something with more of a nutty, wild-rice taste, you should probably try a long grain.

Add the water very gradually at the end - rice flour is peculiar stuff, and it takes only a tiny bit of water to go from dry crumbly mix to batter! Also, your recipe may have been written for a much finer ground flour than you are using - coarser grinds absorb much less water. Get your water ready, and then just add it till you have the texture right, and STOP right there. The perfect texture is traditionally described as "like your earlobe" and that really is about it.

Thank you Doddie! I love that eggplant/squash salad. It will definintely be making an appearance in my family's packed lunches.

Hope you are enjoying your stay! For my family, Shibuya means "music exams", and a family meal with my brother in law afterward, usually at a Chinese restaurant. There's a big Tower records shop on the other side of Shibuya station too, ready to suck up any extra cash!

I love supermarket shots - inside and outside, that supermarket could easily be in Japan (except that they are much less obliging about photo-taking!). Thank you so much. I had a good look, and I will surely go back to pore over those photos.

Wow, ID your furikake at 100 paces! We never had bought furikake until DS2 started at middle school, and I wanted to disguise just HOW much of his bento I was filling up with plain rice . DS1's favorite is sakura-yukari. DS2 seems to like a soft katsuo furikake. I think it's great that your daughter told you what she wanted in her bento. My DS2 gives me complete request menus, but DS1 tells me things like "I want a bento shaped like an airport, with a control tower that pops up when I open the lid". Right... The thing that amazes me about Majra's bentos is that almost NONE of the foods in it are available where I live. My sons' classmates would be absolutely astonished if they saw a bento like those!

We made a kind of "galloping chirashi" yesterday, as I have lots of work on. Much the same as usual, except that I have taken to mixing black beans into the rice. I think the black really picks up the green/yellow/red colors of hina-chirashi well. This year we topped it with ebi and salmon (main concern was elderly in-law's teeth!). We don't have any daughters, and I didn't add my home-made hina to the line-up on top of our TV, because all the figurines there seem to be in tobi-ori mode at present, and it seemed a little inauspicious...

That is one ORGANIZED freezer! I am so impressed. I drove by our Philippines grocery store the other day and it had CLOSED!!! Darn it! No more green jelly! That photo of your elder boy has "I'm a 12 year old boy" written all over it! Bit shy, bit cheeky... My DS1 has a Filipino/Japanese friend who has been at school with him since the year dot. He hasn't had any easier ride at Japanese school than my DS1, but they've both survived - yay! His mother is an excellent cook, and maintains that being bad at cooking is a sign of stupidity!

I got a 4.5L Fissler Vitaquick and christened it today. Yes! It was worth it! I had some Australian rump steak to cook, and 20 minutes after I stepped in the door, a tender but still juicy beef stew with tomatoes and new onions was on the table. I associate my mother's pressure cooker with fragments of dry, flayed meat - this was a better texture than I would have produced in twice the time (considering the haste I would have been cooking in). The 2.5L would have been too small - this is a good size.

A month or so ago, I made a Japanese "okowa" (sticky rice) dish with turmeric and black beans. The contrast between the shiny black beans and the soft yellow rice was just wonderful.

I used the recipe quoted by Boaziko (who says it is GC++ recipe from the Middle East forum) in the "tricks" thread quoted up top "My recipe of Falafel is from the time I worked at the Dorchester Hotel in London. The Egyptian chef in charge of all Oriental cuisine (apart from the Chinese off course) gave it to me. I found it very good: ½ Kilo (1 pound) Dried Chickpeas 1 White Onion ½ Kilo (1 pound) Leeks Half of the volume of the leeks – cilantro or coriander leaves 6 Tbsp Coriander seeds (Don’t mix them with white pepper corns) 2 Tbsp Ground Cumin Sesames seeds Salt 1) Soak the chickpeas for two nights in water, changing the water twice a day. 2) Chop the onion, leeks and coriander leaves. 3) Grind all ingredients; if too dry add some water. 4) Heat the oil up to 180C (= 356F) 5) Before frying roll the Falafel balls in sesames seeds" I used 1 tab salt (1 tsp of that went on the finely chopped coriander leaves and stems, which I squeezed before adding to the mix). This reecipe has no garlic, so please feel free to add it. Ended up using roughly the amount of onion/coriander given: by weight, 1 part dried chickpeas to 1 scant part total vegetables. I soaked the chickpeas for about 40 hours I guess. Ground them fairly coarsely, but a finer grind, nearer a "sandy" texture, might have been better - I wasn't sure the beans were really cooked after frying. The recipe made at least 80 walnut-sized felafel, using a 15ml measuring spoon. They need to be fried till richly brown to cook the beans throughout. The mixture sheds moisture, so there is little advantage in forming all the balls ahead of time - they were easier to handle when I formed 6 as the first 6 were frying (in a wok). I tried rolling them in sesame seeds, and also without sesame, but there was no big difference - the unrolled balls were no more fragile - and the mixture shed most of the seeds while frying. But I had heaps of cheap sesame seeds, so the visual advantage was worth it. I tried adding a little flour, but the mixture is extremely sensitive to the addition of flour - you can immediately detect the doughier, pastier texture if you eat a bean-only felafel and then one with flour. The felafel with flour take longer to brown, although they were easier to handle. The bean-only felafel are best slid gently into the oil with a mesh skimmer. For 500g dried beans, I wouldn't add more than 1 or at most 2 tablespoons of flour. Egg: you could add 1 egg to the total mix made from 500g dried beans. Again, the texture became marginally more doughnut-like, but the egg also added flavor. Although the mix was wetter, it was more robust, and could be dropped into the oil.

The book was "Dutch Delight" by Sylvia Pessireron, N&L Publishing, 2005. The "bare bums" were right on the last page, under "slow food" and are mentioned as coming from the Brabant - Limburg area. My grandmother had a bean slicer just like the one in your link! I'd forgotten all about it.

I think 6L is the biggest I've seen in Japan too. Hmm...I think I'm going shopping. I'm glad to know you can use the bigger one to make small amounts too, because I just realized that the bigger size has been discounted so far that it's cheaper than the smaller one . As for where to store it - other people have kennels in front of their houses, perhaps I can have one for my pots and pans? Edit: Actually, I'm planning to use the pressure cooker as a both a regular pot and a pressure cooker, to replace (wipes away tear) the pot my grandmother gave me 30 years ago when I left school - the composite handle is starting to come off.

Blether, I imagine that refers to the whole dried root. The fresh root is much the same as ginger, only smaller. It has the most wonderful floral scent which is not so discernable in dried turmeric. I love it grated and used when panfrying fish. In Japan it's also quite popular as a tea, and I had some recently combined with jasmine tea. I surprised myself by liking it! The clean taste of the turmeric went very well with the slight astringency of the jasmine tea.

Ooh! There's a sale on Fissler pressure cookers and I want one - lots of people in Japan use the 2.5 liter (tad over 2 quart) size, but you can also get a 4.5 liter size (about 4 quarts) - anybody care to tell me what size they find useful? (We don't get huge hunks of meat here, but I would definitely cook up to 1kg (2 lb) of meat in pieces, or beans.

My sister sent me a little book on Dutch cooking (in English), which has more chat than recipes. It mentions white beans with green beans - "blote billetjes in het gras" (and translates that as "bare bums in the grass"). Apart from the enjoyable image, this sounds like good spring and early summer food - do you have a recipe for this Chufi, or any personal hints?

Shochu is sometimes made from sweet potatoes, but also from barley, and less commonly, rice, buckwheat, and I believe sugar cane sometimes?? I think of it as the Japanese answer to meths

In Japan, miso is normally out on the open shelf, unless it's unpasteurized. If yours was on the open shelf, it's probably fine to use "raw", but you should keep it covered and in the fridge once opened. I imagine that one reason why it is kept refrigerated in stores overseas is that people can't read the label so they aren't sure if it is pasteurized. Also, there's probably a lower turnover, and a bigger demand for organic, unpasteurized miso.

Gosh, you've been busy while my back was turned! Daikon rice cake - perfect seasonal snack for teenagers. Thanks for a nice weekend project! Thanks for all the photos, very inspiring. Enjoy your flying, and don't forget to learn as much as you can about weather...learning to love your instruments is no bad thing for VFR guys either (15 years of translating aircraft accident reports has warped my priorities! )

Must go and check them out...thanks!

Blether: WHERE are you getting these whole chickens?! Tell!