helenjp

Matchstick salads are not unique to Japan, I suspect that they may have come to Japan from SE Asia in the "ethnic" boom of the late 70s and 80s. However, there's nothing exotic about them now! Daikon matchstick salads: Some common ingredients - blander items julienned or in short lengths; stronger items shredded: Daikon Cucumber Carrot New onion, scallions Mitsuba Mizuna (especially the stems) Daikon sprouts or other sprouts Green shiso leaves Red shiso sprouts Ham, more rarely bacon Kamaboko White chicken meat shredded Shirasu (whitebait) fresh, steamed, or deep-fried till crunchy Lemon or yuzu peel Citrus pulp* I'm not so keen on this, I think it somehow makes daikon more bitter Thin age dofu toasted or fried sesame seeds, nuts 1:1 brown sesame oil/soy sauce dressing Mayonnaise or mayonnaise/yogurt dressing Vinaigrette or citrus vinaigrette "wafuu" vinaigrettes, with the salty element replaced with soy sauce, miso, umeboshi, pickles such as wasabi-zuke or takana-zuke, oil sometimes replaced with brown sesame oil. Any other ingredients or preparation styles that go well with daikon-based salads?

Poppyseedbagel, it's interesting that you mention creaming the butter and sugar for a long time - if there's a difference, I think that and adding the milk maybe creates a softer texture and whiter colour than in pound cake, but that's all. Lexy, jam - do you think that there's a strong feeling about what type of jam is used? Or any red jam? We used plum jam because it was so easy to spread. I didn't put this in the baking forum, because I thought people might not know what a Victoria Sandwich Cake was. (And when I was small, I thought it came from Victoria, Australia ).

The ginger just "warms" up the sourness of the umeboshi. It is still very sour - the sugar just mellows it a bit. It might be different with store-bought umeboshi - these were VERY sour ones! It actually tastes very nice ...a bit addictive.

I had a whole batch of umeboshi that I made in extreme haste one year - so I turned half of them in to an umeboshi paste similar to the one Hiroyuki mentioned way up thread - I used about 2 cups of seeded umeboshi, and about 1 cup of black sugar and at least 3 chunks of fresh ginger, shredded. That has mellowed very nicely. I made a umeboshi/miso/sesame/scallions paste with another 2 cups, and this has been great in onigiri or on yaki-onigiri. 2 parts umeboshi flesh (coarsely minced). 2 parts finely chopped scallions, 1 part sesame seeds (toasted) 1 part ground toasted sesame seeds, 1 - 2 parts brown or dark red miso, 0.5 part raw sugar, 0.5 part brown sesame oil. I simmered this for a while to mellow it. Again, it tastes much better now after about a week than the day I made it.

I notice that some people say that a Victoria Sandwich cake uses self-raising flour, but my recipes are identical to pound cake, except for the addition of a little milk in some cases. I've heard that the difference is in the creaming of the butter and sugar...can anybody provide more detail, please? What about appearance or presentation - is the jam sammy presentation the main characteristic of a Victoria Sandwich, or is the texture of the cake itself identifiably different?

That part is "if you teach a man to fish" and the next part is "he will eat for the rest of his life".

Only when wearing a mask and ski-hat, between the hours of sunset and sunrise...

Oh yes, another version: cherry blossom salt, which I tell you shamelessly that I read in a magazine at the bookshop the other day. 2 cups cherry blossoms 2 tab coarse salt Preserved cherry leaves if desired. Chop cherry blossoms finely into salt, ditto leaves if desired, mix well into salt, and use as desired - for example, on seki-han. I'm planning to try this with our remaining ume blossom, if it would stop raining long enough for me to get some!

For salted cherry blossoms, you want blossoms with a nice long stem, heavily double. I won't give you a botanical name, as several varieties have double-flowered cultivars. J page with photos of salted blossoms This site doesn't give exact quantities, but 20% by weight of coarse salt in proportion to the blossoms would be about right. Again, rinse blossoms gently, drain water, lay in salt, sprinkling some over the top, and press under weights for about 3 hours. Gently squeeze most of moisture out (use kitchen paper), and put in a jar with white ume-su or a 20% brine and white wine vinegar solution. Leave for a week. Drain and again squeeze gently. Shake petals loose a little, and store in coarse salt - will keep almost for ever.

J site on preserving cherry leaves. Choose fresh, soft, young leaves that have just reached a reasonable size.Prunus lannesiana var. speciosa, the large-flowered single "Oshima" cherry has large leaves and plenty of fragrance, which apparently comes from toxic substances which make you feel good...right up until the point where you pop your clogs, that is! Pix here, scroll down - these are taken at the university where I teach (part-time, without honor or glory, I might add), though this is not the hort. department site. Several other varieties are related to this, including the fairly popular greeny-yellow "ukon" variety. The Oshima cherry family have soft leaves, but you can still pickle other cherry leaves and either chew harder or just use them for flavoring. To summarize: 1 part by weight of fresh cherry leaves, weighed. 20% of that weight in coarse salt such as kosher salt. 1 part by weight of uncolored or "white" ume-su, the briny vinegary liquid that seeps from umeboshi as they are first pickled. You can also buy it bottled, and if you have none, make a brine of 5 parts water to 1 part salt by weight. Wash leaves, put in a colander in a big bowl, pour boiling water over them, drain, and refresh quickly in cold water. Remove excess water, for example using a salad spinner. The text talks about putting the leaves in the bottom of a cake tin, but that's asking for rust! I'd use a tabletop pickler, or a casserole which you can fit some kind of plate or board inside. Lay leaves out so that you can easily sort them by size (helpful when you want to make sweets etc). Spread 1/3 of the salt in the bottom of the container, fold leaves in half vertically, and lay in the container, then sprinkle the remainder of the salt over. Here she just shows 10 of the leaves. Pour over the ume-su or the cooled brine. Spread wrap over the top (press firmly to exclude as much air as possible). Put a plate or board on top, and add weights - rocks, a stack of plates, a jar etc. Text doesn't say, but use 2-3 times weight of leaves at least. Store in a cool dark place or in the fridge, and after 2-3 days, when liquid has been exuded, reduce weights by half. Text doesn't say, but I think after a week or so, you can take the weights off and put them in a plastic container, preferably with wrap pressed over the surface.

I do so frequently. It works better with steelcut oats than with fine-ground oatmeal, which tends to settle in a thick layer in the bottom. I cook it overnight using the timer and the "congee" setting, but find that I need at least as much water as I would for stove-top cooking. Good luck!

My husband talked me into getting a "safety" gas range while his brother was living with us, as he was very keen on cooking his own lunch, but not able to be totally responsible about safety. Despite a 4,000cal+ burner, stir-fries are namby-pambied by "regulated" temperatures into sloshy piles of wilted stuff, and stews turn themselves off automatically in the early stages. The spirit these "safety" measures arouse in me practically enables me to sear food with the flames from my tongue and the sparks from my burning eyes! P.S. It's handy for tempura, I have to admit it.

You are right - I'm a mine of misinformation, as usual. Sorry! However, this is the first time that I've seen macrobiotics taken notice of here in Japan - it was unknown when I first came here in 1979, and the Muso brand so closely associated with it outside Japan is rarely seen here. I think that macrobiotics may have finally attracted notice because of its similarity to a trend to "plain food" ('sou-shoku!) that did the rounds here in Japan a few years back.

Mizducky, I think that macrobiotics is an import to Japan, curiously enough! I think it started in Hawaii...

I often get bored with things I can do with pea sprouts - this dish looks GOOD! It will be on our dinner table tonight . Thanks for the recipe, and as ever, for all the photos.

Great idea! Turnips with greens are just in season here, but for some reason I thought the greens might be too delicate for this recipe - I've made it with young daikon greens quite often.

Favorite lamb recipe? As long as we're talking lamb and not hogget or older, it would have to be a grilled chop or rack - we get it so rarely, it would be sinful to prepare it any other way . But I've started to find thin-sliced rolls of frozen...er...something older than lamb... that look as if they come to Japan for the mongolian barbecue market. When I find those, I like to get out my Afghan cookbook (GHelen Saberi). The mix of fat and lean is just right for those various dumplings which appear across central Asia with Chinese chives/mint/green coriander. My favorite is Ashak - thin pastry skins filled with drained yogurt, Chinese chives, a bit of red pepper etc, boiled, and topped with hand-chopped lamb fried with onions. A good, flavorful hogget with some fat content is just right for this!

I sometimes wonder about lamb - maybe it's one of those meats that was really meant to be eaten locally. As for the grassfed taste, I think it must be a cultural like/dislike. Born in NZ, I don't always care for the taste of grainfed meat - at worst, I feel as if I'm eating grease with no added flavor. But grassfed lamb is going to start tasting stronger sooner, I guess (possibly it gets more exercise too?). In any case, you can't cook hogget like spring lamb, and expect it to taste the same - though I suppose that's what happens if you want "large" lamb portions! Also, I don't know (and would be curious to find out) the age at slaughter of the southern hemisphere lamb sold in north america for the Easter table? (Or for the spring market, anyway.) I find the best lamb chops from NZ are in the shops in winter in Japan, which may be to do with the slaughter season, and may be to do with the time of the year the Japanese consumer wants to eat lamb, and may be to do with the time of the year that other markets want lamb. I don't know enough to do more than guess.

I did quite a bit of translation on wasabi cultivation at one point. Wasabi grows perfectly in a very narrow range of growing conditions, and is very susceptible to soft rot or black rot if conditions are less than optimum...and there are many other diseases which don't directly affect the appearance of the root, but which make it hard to grow a fat root (and after all, the natural inclination of a brassica like wasabi is to grow lots of leaves, not store up energy in its root at a steady rate over 1-3 years). Although roots with black spots in them are not believed to be harmful to eat, thay are practically unsaleable as fresh root....and if you can't sell them fresh in Japan, it would be very hard to get a commercial return on the huge investment needed to create the right environment. Come to think of it, premium wasabi has become so strictly controlled that I absolutely cannot recall ever seeing fresh root for sale at any Mom-and-Pop vegetable store, not even when I first came to Japan over 25 years ago.

Hi Klary The "real" wasabi, served as a whole, fresh root is definitely regarded as superior. It's sweeter and a little milder than the processed versions, and has a faint aroma. The various processed wasabi products (powders and pastes) often do (almost invariably do) contain European horseradish plus green food coloring. Even "pure" tube wasabi contains practically everything about a wasabi field bar the fenceposts. And both powdered and tube wasabi contain horseradish and/or mustard, usually. However, if the aroma is mostly lost when dried, I'm not that worried about getting European horseradish instead of wasabi in tubes, as long as I'm not paying wasabi prices for mustard. . Wasabi and products European horseradish Armoracia rusticana Japanese wasabi wasabia japonica

Wow, Pam, I think you and your son and the rest of your family really went for it - I'm glad you're all getting the results you deserve! I think teaching kids to think about what they eat is the whole point, and the most useful thing you can do. So impressed! My son1 has grown a lot recently too, looking tall, broad-shouldered, and slim at 14. And son2, who was always skinny, is beefing up now that he's just turned 12, as he gets ready to start growing. I found this site has both BMI and the BMI-for-age charts: BMI-for-age

"The Making" Series: Saki-ika A pretty low-res but informative video on making saki-ika (the soft shredded flavored dried squid served as a beer snack). A quick run down - squid is cleaned and the tubes opened out, boiled for 1min 30 secs at 95-100deg.C., cooled rapidly, dried for just under 5 hours at 45 degC until just under 50% moisture content, flavored with mostly sugar and salt plus some others (let's be bold and guess MSG) overnight, baked at around 130 deg C for 6 minutes, cooled, rolled under heavy pressure to partially break up the tubes, mechanically shredded, simmered with more flavorings, and this time dried at a higher temp of around 50degC for 10-15 minutes, fan-cooled, and packed. At least , that's as far as I got from one viewing, I'll check later to see if I got anything wrong.

Your name was already on screen when I opened this topic, so I typed really fast...

Used as oil, and from ancient times as a dyestuff - for fabric, and in cosmetics. I believe it is used medicinally in traditional medicine, but not to a great extent. One of Genji's less elegant ladies was known as "Safflower", in reference to her red nose! Safflower oil is regarded as nutritious, I forget the exact reasons. I suspect that it's history as a cooking oil in Japan is not as long as rapeseed oil though. The plant is not native to Japan, but was one of the earliest to come from China - it has been cultivated since the Nara period.

I like yuzu salt - and that ume salt looks interesting - wonder if the ume is powdered dried ume mixed with salt? Sakura natto sounds like a wonderful combination of flavors. Thanks for keeping us up to date!