helenjp

So what does black bean soy sauce taste like? Apart from soy sauce, that is...

I was wondering how your bento had gone, Toasted! Look forward to pix. John, I would never have picked that particular bento box ( because I hate washing out the small chopstick container part times 4 family members!), so just shows how personal the choice is! Recent trends spotted... - a double-decker lunchbox which had small plastic containers inside instead of a divider. Up till then, the double-decker lunchboxes I'd seen had very simple interiors. - a double-decker aluminum lunchbox with an entirely removable inside container, so you can heat the plastic container, then drop it into the metal container, which transfers heat away from the lunchbox and cools it faster (all-plastic boxes do tend to retain heat). - not so very recent, but lots of insulated lunchbox bags around, some with pockets for frozen cool packs in them.

Not strictly relevant, but I looked into the spelling recently after one of my classes hit upon "shekwasha" or citrus depressa while playing a logic game, and were forced to choose something else because nobody could figure out how to spell it!

Definitely "larger"-capped enoki have been developed elsewhere too - I'm sure I saw some enoki last year in the supermarket advertised as "bigger"! Enoki don't seem to be as cheap as they used to be - used to be able to get "twin-pack" specials quite often. Eryngi, meanwhile, have definitely come down in price - they're a lunchbox staple at my house, since they keep fairly well.

Thanks for the link, Hiroyuki - I was upstairs settling a kid with a headache, and didn't get downstairs till the Mexican lady and her DH were on. Drat! So yellow notes are the secret? You don't ever write them out and forget to take them to the store?? . You mentioned your cooking was going to feature more this time...what did you actually make/buy/eat?

I was interested to see those itadori, Hiroyuki. I saw some from Akita prefecture, but they were picked younger, and pickled in salt - so they looked like completely flat straps!

Hmm...the way we make home-made dried fish is to buy a cheap plastic laundry hanger (the round type with lots of pegs hanging down if possible, peg up the briefly brined strips of meat (or small butterflied fish by their tails), swathe the whole thing in coarse cheesecloth or netting so that the netting doesn't touch the meat or fish, and hang up in a shady place with a good breeze, such as just inside a window or on a balcony. Should be done in 12 hours.

Somewhere today, I was reading about a foreigner in Japan who discovered that itadori is related to rhubarb (poisonous leaves, edible stems), and used it as an acceptable substitute for rhubarb in desserts!

No...but I think this stuff grows pretty well if you want to plant some - I don't know how hardy it is in a UK winter, but I'm sure you'd get enough to eat in a summer, though maybe not by the end of May!

Konnyaku sashimi!

vegetarian bentos with all the usual suspects. This is a fall menu. Top photo: Top left of the close-ups: seaweed (hijiki), tofu ganmodoki, simmered dish of squash, small taro, and bamboo shoots, deepfried sweet potato (maybe), colored fu Fresh fu grilled on a skewer with dengaku miso topping (see the miso sauces thread) black beans simmered in syrup, apple with umeboshi paste how to make fu - this is pretty much the method I use. Bottom left of the close-ups: sesame tofu (ground sesame and dashi, seasonings, thickened with arrowroot), okara (tofu lees) croquette, tofu shuumai - a mixed tofu filling in shuumai pastry steamed, fresh tofu "skin", simmered shiitake mushrooms Bottom right of close-ups: Rice with chopped wakame (sea-lettuce), turned out of a fan-shaped mold - not suitable for a lunch to be carried, only for formal dining, peanuts, probably simmered in sweet liquid, salt-pickled greens. Fucha style temple cooking bento. Bit hard to see what's going on...red rice in the back, packed with tempura of vegetables and maybe fu, front left container - maybe sesame tofu or similar arrowroot-set savory jelly in the middle, behind that probably small tofu carved in flowers and simmered, to the left, vegetable wrapped in fried tofu or maybe tofu "skin", and simmered; to the right, a layered simmered dish of vegetables or seaweed layered with dried tofu, simmered in a sweetish broth probably, to the front...hmmm...at a guess, two types of dengaku skewers, probably tofu, some mountain (wild) vegetables, maybe a little dessert of agar jelly and sweet beans?, probably some pretty shapes of fu, and some snow peas; the righthand container...fruit, to the left dressed greens, then left to an orange square of who knows what, in front of that a bundle of veges wrapped in a thin slice of turnip, pickled or vinegared, to the right of that vinegared lotus root, and a skewer of deep fried tofu (at a guess, but could be fu). Beside that, I'm guessing a fucha-style dish of finely shredded root vegetables with a gingko nut, thickened with arrowroot.

fu = wheat gluten or seitan, yes. Kinpira is always a good standby, because it keeps well, even in summer. Another oldie but goodie is hijiki - here's torakris' recipe. This has the added advantage of freezing well in small, one-serving sizes. I'll post a couple of recipes later, at the moment I'm just updating my personal file of Very Lazy Cheats for Bentos! The one I like best so far is freezing cubes of tamago-yaki, and adding them frozen to the lunchbox in the morning... .

1) "hot lunch" bento - my 12 year old son has just started at a new school. Of the 37 kids in his class, only a small handful use the "hot" bento, including him - he uses a thermos pack for the rice and small plastic boxes for the side dishes. Not as heavy as the hot lunch jars which keep everything hot. This type of hot lunch set doesn't keep the rice really hot, but certainly warm enough that it is soft rather than hard, as cold rice tends to get. The rest of his class use mostly double-decker lunch boxes, with the rice on the bottom tier and the side dishes on the top tier. These have the advantage of packing smaller for the return journey - the slightly smaller top tier fits inside the bottom tier once they are empty!). A few use the older style of flat lunchbox, but these are less popular - unless you have the type with individual small containers inside it, the food tends to pack down into one corner on a long commute if not very skilfully packed. 2) Vegetarian bento and tofu. Tofu itself is watery, so spoils easily and also sheds water through the rest of the bento. I do use "oshi-dofu" - cotton tofu pressed really firmly till about 1/2 its original thickness, then grilled with miso topping, marinated briefly in soy and dashi stock, cubed and tossed in salads or ground sesame, or stir-fried with vegetables. Vegetarian bento are made by temples, but they are mainly for service inside the temple, and not designed for travel. This type of food is also more influenced by Chinese food - for example, vegetables wrapped in yuba (the skimmed "skin" of heated soy milk) and deep-fried, or simmered in broth. There's also an agar-agar set tofu jelly known as "fucha tofu" from the fucha style of temple cooking, which is used to make all kinds of seasonally flavored jellies with soy milk. In other cases, arrowroot is used to set vegetable jellies and molds. Tofu dishes better known are: "Gisei-dofu" dishes, where the tofu is pressed slightly, sieved, and mixed with a type of grated yam called "tsukune-imo", seasoned and mixed with seasonal vegetables, then fried or steamed. Hiryouzu or ganmodoki (recipe) are deep-fried, but can then be simmered in flavored stock. Where ordinary cooking uses sesame seeds, vegetarian food uses a wider variety of nuts and seeds such as walnuts ground into dressings, or poppy seed toppings or coatings. Other bean dishes - at this time of year, fresh broad beans with a slash in the outer skin and then boiled are often put in lunchboxes. Another non-temple bean dish is sweet beans - dried beans are cooked till nearly tender, then drained and returned to the pot with a little sugar and sometimes soy sauce. Alternatively beans are simmered in dashi broth with sugar and later a little soy, together with cubes of konnyaku jelly, carrot, dried shiitake mushroom, and maybe kelp and burdock root. Another characteristic of vegetarian cooking is "fu". Fu is a gluten bread - the dough is washed until the starch comes out, leaving just the gluten. This is then baked or simmered. Dried balls or sticks of fu are often used in soups or simmered vegetable dishes in everyday cooking, but fresh fu colored or flavored in seasonal themes is a specialty of temple or high-end kaiseki (formal) dining. Temple cooking usually includes not only a range of flavors, but a range of textures - deepfrying not only adds calories, but provides crisp textures.

I have a feeling it's probably just a few bags of snacks, but I'm very willing to find out that I'm wrong!

I have to agree, I don't know of one book in English on this topic - you might find one or two recipes in more general collections though.

The old foodie blog mentioned in another thread on another forum has a link to a method for making coddled eggs, which is just onsen tamago by another name. However, the Cunning Device mentioned is to warm your saucepan with boiling water, empty it out, place eggs in and slam lid on for a few minutes to take the chill off the shells, THEN pour near-boing water over and leave for 12 minutes. Just made one to encourage a morosely studying son1, and it turned out perfectly.

I'm thinking of going - it's just a hop for us, and I feel it wouldn't hurt to cover up the HOLES in son's bedroom wall before his teacher makes a home visit! We have Swedish friends living locally too, so will be sure to report back on what we find.

Hard to say without seeing it, but I have a feeling that this is not real gobo (if it is, it would be the young roots). Probably it is called "yama gobo" (mountain gobo) BUT it isn't that either (real mountain gobo is pokeweed, quite poisonous unless carefully prepared). Pickled gobo root that looks the way you describe is most likley the root of a type of thistle called cirsium dipsacolepis, mori-gobo or gobo-azami. In that case, I think I'd give up and try making it with young carrots, as the cirsium dipsacolepis root is quite sweet.

It really fascinates me that you have sales in spring - in Japan, such things are always in autumn, and somehow that feels normal to me! . Have a great weekend...I await photos of food and junk from you, and from my Dutch relatives, photos of them playing music in the streets!

I usually use half potato starch and half regular flour. I almost wonder if potato starch is processed a different way (finer granules, for example???) now, because I think it seems to form a pasty coating very easily, rather than the almost hard crispy coating I remember from years ago. Or maybe I'm just getting senile. I heard the same thing as smallworld says about the origins of the dish. It's certainly a winner - good warm or cold, suits a variety of foods, keeps well.

Gosh, wonder what encouraged you to do that?!

Quality of the miso - it's important! I've never had good results from miso sauces or marinades made using really cheap miso that hasn't been fermented longer than 3 months. Mixed miso - a lot of older recipes for dengaku or other toppings/dips specify "sakura miso" (mostly aka-miso/hatcho miso with a small proportion of sweet white miso mixed in) or other mixed miso (awase-miso). Awase miso is not just mixing sweeter/milder with saltier miso, usually people choose a bean or barley miso and mix it with a rice-based miso. Letting sauces mature. Can't figure out a really good reason for this, but miso-dare (miso dips) seem to mature and improve if left for a day or so before using. Sugar content - higher than you'd expect. The recipes below both work out to VERY ROUGHLY 1 part or less sweet stuff (sugar, sake, mirin) to 2 parts miso or salty stuff, and not more than 1 part liquid such as water or dashi. However, I've seen recipes in older more classical books which are closer to 1:1. I prefer to use mirin or nikiri mirin (mirin with alcohol evaporated) more than sugar, but it's certainly cheaper to use sugar. Try this name-miso as a topping for dengaku etc.: 1/2 c (Japanese cup) of mixed miso of your choice 1 tab sugar 2 tab mirin 3 tab sake 4-5 tab dashi If you want to add sesame seeds, peanuts, walnuts etc., grind them in a small mortar first then add the miso and grind them together for a bit before adding the rest. Rich dengaku miso (use on shellfish or fish which are to be very quickly grilled, for example) 200g miso (equal parts of mild and salty miso) 1 tab sugar 3 tab each mirin and sake 2 egg yolks Little bonito dashi if needed to soften miso. Mix miso and sweeteners in a pan and stir over low heat till smooth and starting to bubble. Cool thoroughly and add 2 egg yolks, mixing in well. Add a little dashi if the miso is still too stiff. The proportions of egg to miso are about right here, but you can adjust the sweeteners considerably - down to 1 tab each of mirin and sake if you prefer. Miso itself varies so much in sweetness and saltiness that you should really taste and adjust sweetness to suit your own preferences. Don't forget to use more sugar etc if you want a thinner "sauce" rather than a paste.

That looks delicious! Thinking of rings of naga-imo, I've seen chopped tuna sashimi (maguro no tataki) served on top of slices of nagimo - usually it's served with slivers of naga-imo on top of the tuna.

wok smoking with tea leaves is a similar method - haven't done it for ages...

melonpan, could be Oligo sugar, which remains very popular here. Even my DH is convinced that it's good for him. I like the aloe yogurt - it's surprisingly fresh, and not too sweet.