helenjp

Hard to describe - a good handful of herbs...plus a very small daikon and tiny turnip.

Decent hegi-soba - well, who knows what the quality is like, as I have nothing else to compare it with . However, son and husband were raving about it, so it must have tasted good to them. I bought a pack of herbs - I did once try to gather them all, but even around here, there is less and less wild land every year. Toaster oven...that's our *new* toaster oven, you realize? The old one finally collapsed. This one will grill 10 mochi at once . However, the old one made better toast!

Alternative herbs for Nanakusa-kayu. Different regions of Japan use differnt herbs anyway. Let me see...what are good spring herbs in the west? You want mostly mild ones, with just one or two distinctive flavors. Very young dandelion greens if you salt them and let them sit for a bit and then wring them out... Daikon greens - you can whack the top off a daikon and put it on a saucer in the windowsill - the new shoots will be fine for this dish. Carrot greens are remarkably good, actually, especially in small quantities such as for this dish (they are quite fibrous). Things like sorrel. chervil, chickweed, flat parsley?

There it is...the awful truth! My husband is doing the dishes, while I eGullet. From left, the gas range, the prep area - the cloth is in the process of draining the bean-jam seen earlier, the white box is the bread-maker, the frowning thing is my darling, and behind him from left to right in the window bay is a rack of condiments (not extensive, as the summer sun hits that area), often-used stainless steel bowls and saucepans, a rack of flour, sugar, salt, dashi bags, barley tea bags, and at right, the dish-draining racks.

Dinner...today is January 7, the day for "Nanakusa-kayu" or 7-herb congee. Rick LaPointe has helpfully written a nice article on this. He's a very well-informed writer on Japanese food, with lots of ideas of his own as well. First, the congee is made. Upthread, I made a "zengayu" congee with 1 part rice : 7 parts water. This time I made "gobu-gayu" with 1 part rice: 10 parts water". The congee is cooked very slowly. When it's almost ready, it's time to chop up the turnip finely, chop the daikon into thin rounds, and mince the other herbs and rub them briefly with a pinch or two of coarse salt. Toss the daikon and turnip into the completed congee, and let the other herbs sit with the salt briefly. Then squeeze, and toss in. Here it is...I honestly think this is one of the most delicious things that Japan has to offer! It has of course a faintly herbal aroma, so it goes well with a rich dish such as tempura. I'm glad somebody suggested it, as I hadn't thought about what I was going to serve with the congee this year. Tempura...if you want to try it for the first time, avoid things like squid or oysters which contain a lot of water, and can easily explode in hot oil, causing burns. Shrimp are great, but I think that tempura is essentially a vegetarian dish - the shrimp are just along for the ride. Firm vegetables such as lotus root and sweet potato are easy, also funghi of every type, pumpkin, and chili peppers (in Japan, the mild shishi-tou is used - slit the pods to prevent explosions). You can make tempura with shiso leaves, nori etc., but try these when you've made a few batches. Honestly, I'm not sure if I could fry tempura on an electric cooker - gas is much easier to control. This time I used: shiitake (cut the tops to even out the cooking time), shimeji funghi, pumpkin, sweet potato, small taro - they were young, so I scrubbed them firmly and left the skins on and cooked them without batter, shishitou peppers, lotus root, yam bundles, shrimp, and tiny "chisha" fish (not shown). I use Canola oil, rapeseed is also good, and I believe that professionals mix in a small proportion of sesame oil. Avoid soy oil - it burns at high temperatures and is heavy and greasy. Batter: In this case, I used a low-fluten cake flour known in Japan as "Violet" brand. You can add a little baking powder, which of course makes a thicker, doughier tempura which is not as delicious fresh, but which keeps a bit better. You can also add about 50% cornflour, which makes the dough very crisp...also very brittle, and much more inclined to fall off the ingredients. I usually use some, and I did notice the difference this time - the tempura was greasier, and if you look closely at the finished plate, you can see this, especially as some of the tempura had been fried 15 minutes or so by the time the photo was taken. Tempura is not a family dish - it really needs one person to fry a constant supply for everybody else to eat. The standard proportions are 1 part flour to 1 part beaten egg topped up with ice-water. Mix till barely mixed - a few lumps are fine. DON'T OVERMIX!!! (Should I say that again?!). Don't allow batter to stand - mix wet into dry immediately before use. If you want, buy ready-made tempura-mix flour - it works beautifully, and keeps pretty well for bento etc too. Also ...I never drink when cooking tempura! It's too risky. Here goes... First off, I pulled the heads off some shrimp and checked for the black gut along the top. I shelled them, leaving the tails, and then made notches along the underbelly, roughly where every "plate" meets. This makes them fry flat instead of curling up, and also makes it easier to eat them in several bites. Sorry about the blurry photo. I snipped open the tummies of the small fish with kitchen scissors (such a waste, as they had roe, but the boys and husband are fussy) and also removed fins etc. I heated the oil in my wok to about 180degC - the traditional test is either to put a pair of dry wooden chopsticks into the oil - fine bubbles should ascend in a steady stream, but not explode in a mass of bubbles (too hot). Alternatively, drop a tiny bit of batter in - it should not quite hit the bottom of the pan, but ascend fairly rapidly to the top. If it barely dips and then rises again with masses of bubbles, it's too hot. If it sticks to the bottom, it's still too cold. Drop some items into the batter and drop into the oil - don't cover more than half the surface area of the oil, or the temperature will drop too far to recover rapidly. Food will cook surprisingly rapidly. Probably sweet potato will take the longest, but even that won't take more than 4 minutes or so. Cook the blandest foods first, fish last. Here we have lotus root just after it has been added to the pan. You can see the ten-kasu scattering off to one side of the pan, and masses of bubbles. When the lotus root is almost done, there will be fewer bubbles. Tempura should not be more than faintly golden at most - it should never brown. Remove and drain well. Remove the ten-kasu promptly - if it burns, it will make everything you fry taste bitter. http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11366111...7941_3_3360.jpg Plated tempura - eaten with some coarse salt, and commercial sauce (basically katsuo-dashi seasoned with mirin sweet sake and soy sauce). I forgot to buy daikon, which should be grated into the sauce. And finally, just to bring you down...the used oil is poured through the filter to the right of the photo, into the oil pot, and is then re-used. This is getting a bit dark - amost time to toss it. And finally..yours truly. It's been a long hard year, and I've put on a lot of weight but at least now I can smile! Actually, I'm n ot smiling, but trying to boss son1 into taking the photo without including the mess on the floor...but that's close enough! I wanted to include myself so you get some idea of the size of the workspace. There is a narrow gap between the unit on the left, which holds my microwave, and the toaster on top of that (with the bean-jam in the making on top of that...) and the gas range. Next to that are a couple of unglazed garden pots - I can put dripping wet equipment in them , and they drain dry! I can get into that space, but it's hard to move freely there, so I tend to reach over from the main kitchen area to the range - one reason why it has been hard to teach my kids to cook. Behind me is my total prep area, and a bread machine. On the right is a double sink. P.S. I wasn't kidding about using the microwave door more than the microwave! Next up....the bean jam!

Gosh, let me think...if I got them for 58yen for 100g (I should be so lucky...), that would be...hmm...USD16-17 for 3kg at the cheapest!

Hiroyuki, son1 bought himself a takoyaki maker (electric) with his pocket money, but it really is not powerful enough. I hated making takoyaki using that thing. However, the takoyaki iron on the Zojirushi electric grill I bought (a purchase also documented on eGullet) works beautifully! This is the first time I used this one, but we'll be using it again...and again... Kansai foods that I still eat...hmmm...I lived in Osaka 25 years ago, so it's been a while! However...I still like things cooked with kombu-dashi, I think I probably prefer lighter seasonings than my husband, I like white miso soup now and again...I like to teach my kids about the traditional sweets such as neri-kiri (I'll try and make some if I get time to make white an...if not now, then I'll put it on the Japan Forum). Takoyaki and okonomiyaki - I like them Osaka-style. Cooked Kanto-style, I'd have to agree with you that it's a better idea to order pizza! For me, takoyaki Osaka-style means a sloppy interior, and okonomiyaki should have a minimum of batter, just to bind the cabbage, and the batter should contain grated yam, which makes it fluffy rather than heavy and doughy like bad pizza. Another Kansai favorite that's much underrated is kushi-yaki - bits of this and that on skewers, dipped in egg and crumbs, and quickly deepfried. Also, some Kansai tempura is eaten with salt rather than being dipped in ten-tsuyu sauce. I like that idea - it creates more variation in the meal, and I really prefer shrimp with salt rather than ten-tsuyu. Nakji, thanks for the extra background on Korean New Year. Japanese women are also reluctant to marry an eldest son! I married a younger son...but he is the defacto head of his generation, as his older brother has a chronic illness. He sometimes groans about the responsibilities, but I remind him that the expectations come along with a lot of love and respect from his family (even the cantankerous ones!), who see the burden he carries. And since he's not actually the eldest son, he seems to feel free to pick and choose his duties! Lunch today was a two-part affair - son2 and I had a bread roll grilled with cheese, and left early for his violin lesson. Son1 and husband had hegi-soba with chicken and winter spinach, shiitake, and some very thin scallions...apparently son1 took a photo, so he'll upload that when he gets out of the bath! On our way home, son2 and I picked up some groceries, and brought home a snack for the domestic slaves. Nikuman (Pork bun) and anman (bean jam bun) with a glass of lemon/vitamin C mix. I must sound obsessive, but whenever we go to New Zealand from northern hemisphere midsummer to southern hemisphere midwinter, I find that a few weeks of vitamins does a lot to help stop colds, so until son2's exams are over, we're dosing up. Following directly....dinner pix of tempura and 7-herb congee.

Good morning! Walnut bread this morning to go with our usual banana and yogurt, and biiig cup of hot, black tea. Walnuts are another traditionally "warming" food. I buy bread more often than I used to, but still use the bread machine very often - not only do I find Japanese bread a bit moist for my taste, but 6 or 8 thick slices per pack is an expensive way to buy bread if you eat it often. Jeniac42 thanks for those hints on an-pan. I will definitely try them out, and put something on the Japan Forum, but I'll wait until temperatures warm up a bit - my kitchen is very cold at this time of year. Hartshorn - not in general use, but "traditional" in certain western-Japanese fusion recipes which date back around 100 years. Healthy food - I do think Japan can claim to have kept more traditional good sense about nutrition for longer than in the west, though there are probably just as many people here who "don't cook" as in western countries. Yesterday I ate lunch in the academic part-timers' staffroom, which has one drink machine serving green tea, hot water, or cold water. IF you want coffee or any other kind of tea, you have to bring it yourself, and find a place to keep it, as we are allowed nothing but a couple of cardboard file boxes (my coffee is filed under "writing materials"...). In my last blog, I was at the smaller horticultural department campus, where the office staff keep a huge variety of teas plus instant coffee and "Creap" creaming powder for visiting teachers. Some staff bring lunch from home, others grab some type of fancy bread or an onigiri filled rice ball at the convenience store at the station, and the fortunate few who manage to battle their way through the students can pick up one of the lunches sold on trestle tables in the windswept quad. It's too far to make it to the main student dining area, so the staff bring a small selection to our outpost, but they sell out in about 10 minutes. Yesterday the lunch packs were covered with a couple of thick blankets in an attempt to keep them warm! One of my friends is a Korean woman, who told me that New Year at her home was focused on making food offerings for ancestors - much like Japanese Obon in summer. She said they must pay their respects to 4 generations of the dead - e.g. deceased grandparents plus the 3 preceding generations. One of my students from Okinawa told me that they also eat the same food at New Year and Obon - pork gut soup! That came out in a discussion about immigration - would they miss their possessions. They said no, they'd only miss Japanese food...until they started to think about preparing Japanese food without the equipment to do so! I've come to realize the same thing - the western food I cook here in Japan is not necessarily the food that I miss the most, it's the food which fits best with our lifestyle, and the food which is most practical for me to find in Japanese shops and prepare in a Japanese kitchen. And although I don't use them often, my grandmother's coffee cups and the tea-set my mother gave me seem to watch over my kitchen protectively from their place in the china cabinet. You will see them - I've cleaned out more drawers, and then I can take some photos - not that it's a clean kitchen by any standards, but when I started cleaning it out, I wasn't sure if you could even tell which way was up in a photo! Now I'm off to have a cup of cardamon coffee, hang out the washing, and put a batch of bean jam on to cook.

Blackberries *groan*. When I return to NZ, I buy frozen blackberries to make pie with, because we are never there in summer. I'm sure my kids don't understand it, but I have so many memories of blackberrying! Of course, in those days you couldn't buy them, you HAD to pick your own. I think blackberry jam is my favorite jam.

Must have foods - I think that would be miso soup for my husband. Occasionally he gets up and makes it himself if I haven't made any! And yes, he does cook...partly because he was 40 when we married, partly becauase he grew up in a household with an alcoholic father and a tubercular stepmother - he decided that if he didn't make himself handy, things might get too much for his stepmother, and she might leave. My kids, of course, have eaten a mixture of foods since they were little, so they think it's normal to sometimes have miso soup and sometimes not. However, they miss their rice if we don't eat it in when in New Zealand. They miss NZ sausages while in Japan. I'm really racking my brains over the question of what NZ foods I cook in Japan - so much is determined by 1) meal style - the old macaroni cheese as a side-dish to rice issue, and 2) availability of ingredients, and 3) cooking styles - it's so expensive to fire up the oven here. Since stewing cuts of meat are VERY rare here, I don't cook the stews etc that I might otherwise. I do cook stove-top dishes like soups, or stews plumped up with dumplings though. I also cook desserts, and serve them for breakfast, since a rice-based Japanese dinner is not really conducive to a starchy dessert. I also make NZ-style preserves such as vinegar pickles, or the kiwifruit jam that appeared earlier in the blog. I suppose I also cook things that I didn't cook in NZ, but which satisfy my desire for more varied tastes but also go well with rice - middle eastern and south american foods, Korean and Chinese food, in particular. And porridge!! My husband won't eat it, but the boys and I eat it all winter. Rice-cooker multi-purposing...it doesn't work exactly like a slow-cooker, as the heat is varied rather than constant, but near enough. People used to cook cakes in rice cookers, but now that the ricecookers measure weight, cake batter is too light to cook properly in a rice cooker. I regularly steam/bake potatoes and sweet potatoes in the rice-cooker. I also sometimes slow-cook large chunks of meat. I also cooked the New Year black beans in the rice cooker. It doesn't reduce the liquid enough, so I boil up the liquid until syrupy and pour it over the cooked beans. All these do best on the slower "congee" setting, but potatoes etc will do fine on the normal rice setting. You can add butter or a splash of sake, but it doesn't seem to be necessary.

Time to answer some questions: Why do people avoid free sweet potatoes? I think that what used to be strictly a tourist route to the temple has become a main access route to the station, so regular commuters are immune to their charms - also, the charcoal roasting makes them dry and floury - very sweet that way, but also dry on days when the wind is cold and dry. Not to mention the gas-inducing properties... I think he gives them away to encourage sales, but also just for old times' sake - the vegetable shop also gives away sweet potatoes, and mochi grilled over their heater. Sweet potatoes grilled over charcoal are a forgotten taste now that everybody grills their fish under a gas broiler. Hiroyuki, you probably remember this road as lined with vegetable fields and patches of irises - it's all new housing now. Abra - anpan - I hear you, but I'm not sure if I'll obey!! I have made anpan in the past - it was very difficult to get a nice, pillowy bread dough that rises without creating a big gap between the an filling and the bread dough. Any tips? Sukiyaki - my husband has been muttering "sukiyaki" since before Christmas, but I have been hanging out for 1) cheaper post-New Year prices and 2) Australian beed. We'll see what's in the supermarket this weekend - the other necessity is nice, fat doro-negi (long onions sold with the dirt still on them). Bad weather in the autumn has really affected price and availability of winter vegetables recently. Fou de Bassan, your son did a wonderful job! My sons have not become as interested in cooking as I had hoped. They say they are afraid that things won't taste good, but I think that son1 is not greatly interested, and son2's music practice eats up too much of his time. The "lesser cold" is in some ways the colder season and the more risky to health, as we get the cold, dry continental winds which dry the nose and throat and make it so easy to catch colds and flu. The idea is that in the lesser cold you should eat light, warming dishes with plenty of carbs and dried fruits/dried vegetables to warm up and help retain fluids, and then move to more nourishing dishes as the "great cold" approaches. The "dog days" of summer apparently come in winter too - in summer, people traditionally eat eel then, but in winter (the dog days this year fall from Jan 17 - Feb 3, peaking on Jan 24), a time to eat nourishing winter meats and nabe. Japanese meal structure - the basics are rice, soup, pickles, salt/dried fish. More formally, there should be something with a dressing, something grillled etc. In primitive times, it was boiled rice or congee plus stone-baked or fire-grilled meats or nutmeat patties, and I think that old feeling that there should be something boiled and something grilled still prevails. I keep turning that over in my mind - the old "puddings" that Marlena talks of remind me of the old cauldron-based cooking - the slice off the ham boiled with the pot-herbs, the dumpling (sweetened or not) or porridge. Japanese love to talk about how unhealthy western food is, but they are talking about a particular subset of Victorian and Edwardian dishes which became popular in Japan because they didn't need an oven, and because they were based on cheap starch rather than expensive protein - croquettes, curry and rice, etc. I don't think that the vegetable soup + slice of meat + dumpling or potato western basic meal is essentially more unhealthy than the basic Japanese counterpart! Bean jam tomorrow, then...though I now recall that I tossed my horsehair sieve last year as it was a bit insect-eaten, thinking that I might never make sarashi-an ( a type of fine bean jam) again, so I will have to make do. Photos of markets...may be difficult - the supermarkets are not welcoming of photos, and the local shops are still closed. But tomorrow I plan to buy some millet at the health shop near my son2's violin teacher, and hope to get some photos there.

I second that - it's a fine record and a fine resource.

I don't know about cute...ever have a pet sheep stand on your foot, grinning goofily at you, and refusing to move one inch? Cows at least have enough sense of self-preservation to move if you yell at them. Anyway. I love lamb, and hoggett, and probably mutton too if I could remember when I last ate any. I'm sure it sounds stupid, but I have a growing feeling that humans are best adapted to eating the smaller domestic animals such as pigs, sheep, and goats (let's leave cats out of the discussion for the moment), and reserving larger animals for occasional consumption. No logical basis, just a feeling... Lamb - roast it, fry it, grill it, stew it, make soup out of it - it's as versatile as the humble chicken, and tastier with it. Easier to pluck, too. I know people object to the gaminess or whatever, but when I first lived in Japan, beef was so expensive that I almost never ate it. When I did, I could hardly stand the taste - so I suspect that familiarity is the main issue here.

Please do! I'm so fascinated by citrus that I once had a dream in which I discovered a huge, huge poster with photographs, descriptions, and botanical names for every variety of citrus in the world. ...if only! As for aisles and aisles of stuff and nothing to eat, I agree - if you want to buy actual food, you find yourself very much on the outer rim of the supermarket...or even better, out the door entirely.

Passsionfruit! That's something I miss from NZ - it's a bit too cold here in winter for the vines to survive. What I like best about them is that they just GROW - you don't need to mess about with that care and cultivation stuff, you just go out one day and there are the beautiful flowers - and only the wonderful fruit could console one for the fact that they fade and die... Thanks for the sage offer, but honestly, I can smell it as I type...I don't need the actual physical presence . One thing about not living in an English-speaking countries is that whole aeons of food culture come and go unknown to me - I googled you on Amazon.uk, and gosh, your Jewish Heritage book comes up in a paired offer with my sister's everyday food bible, Evelyn Rose's book! It's fate... I'm very sad that you wrote a book about cheese though - it's probably the food I miss most in Japan. My microwave has a place in my kitchen - I think particularly because I only have 2 heating elements on my gas range, so it speeds things up to have one more cooking device around. And secondly, packed lunches here are supposed to leave home HOT - so it's either up at 5 am with the gas stove, or up at 6:30am with the microwave! I'm enjoying sudden memory-shocks - Hiroyuki asked about NZ foods that I still cook in Japan, and because the British tradition is so strong in NZ, your blog keeps uncovering things that might have been covered by the detritus of many mental flood-tides for ever (doesn't that sound better than "I forgot all about it"?). Macaroni cheese! I feed it to my kids, but my husband thinks it's a side dish to be eaten with rice, so I never cook it when he's around! Steamed puddings - I brought my grandmother's stained old pudding cloth to Japan with me, and a pudding basin too. And cornish pasties - for a while I made them often in Japan, but I'd forgotten all about them...good with lamb too...hmmm. Bagels - I have to agree with your husband. I'm sure there are good bagels there, but the ones I see in bags in the Japanese supermarkets can just stay right there, thank you.

Those brown bits are the ten-kasu - the scraps that float up when you deepfry tempura. Drained, they keep well in the freezer, and add richness and lightness to takoyaki and okonomiyaki.

CHINESE CABBAGE PICKLES I brought in the Chinese cabbage that had been drying on the balcony in the cold wind, and used some of it for the Mongolian noodles yesterday. Late last night, I salted the rest... ...using coarse, moist Japanese pickling salt, at a rate of 3% by weight. I'll start this out with a weight double that of the vegetables, until the moisture covers the Chinese cabbage. As the vegetable has been partly dried, it will take a while, and I will need to watch out for mold...I'll toss in a couple of red chili peppers before I cover it. OMURAISU BENTO I was planning on chicken fried rice for our bento, so I made omuraisu instead. I used rice from the freezer, and there wasn't quite enough for the quantity of vegetables (1/2 onion sauteed, about 50g chopped ham, a good handful of chicken pieces left over from ozouni, small handful of shimeji mushrooms, 2 small Japanese green peppers, lots of pepper, salt, and finally about 2 tab ketchup. Then I made the omelet...here you see the monkey fall from the tree!! No excuse - the texture was fine, which is why I included the photo, but the pan was too big and maybe not hot enough. Texture: the key thing is not to overbeat the raw eggs, and to take it off the heat while the inside is still a little liquid. Some people add the tiniest amount of grated garlic to the raw egg mixture. This ketchup is on the UNDERSIDE of the finished omelet, between the omelet and the rice. The omelet I made for my husband's bento turned out better - he even phoned me to tell me how good it tasted at lunchtime His 'n hers bento - mine has a handy container for chopsticks, but it only takes baby-size chopsticks which are all but impossible to use. At right is husband's favorite bento box, minus the drop-in plastic compartments I usually use. There is a side of katsuo flakes and spinach, and a few slices of bettara-zuke daikon pickles at the back. Oh yes - this is the main purpose of our (grubby) microwave - the door folds down into probably the most useful preparation surface in my kitchen I put oatmeal and a grated apple to cook on the "congee" setting of my rice cooker last night, and had a quick bowl of that this morning. My husband got the boys out of their pajamas (reluctantly) and to the table (eagerly), but no photos of all that. Our bentos went in the microwave briefly, and off I went to university. SOrry, I forgot my camera... HOT DOGS Before I went to bed last night, I made a batch of son2's hot dog sauce - the recipe I showed him for his home economics "homework". While I was at university, they heated the sausages in the microwave... ...and put relish and dogs into rolls. I see they don't use plates when Mum's not around... DORAYAKI I bought these pancakes filled with beanjam home for their snack. Cheap, but pretty tasty (I swiped a bite, one from each to be fair!). Note the almost-crumpetlike cellular structure. I think it's probably hartshorn-leavened. TAKOYAKI No okonomiyaki, but TAKOYAKI!!!! Octopus balls - and here you thought they didn't have them! There's a great fish-shop under the train tracks near university, and there I got two boiled octopus heads - about 1/4 the price of legs, and just fine for this recipe. We made two batches of 30 from this recipe, and made a few experiements. Here'S the conclusive recipe! Batter: 200g weak-gluten cake flour (use stronger flour if you want a more manageable batter) 2 tsp baking powder, 800cc dashi stock or water, pinch sugar, dash soy sauce, 1 tsp sugar if desired, 1 beaten egg. Beat wet into dry. Ingredients: Chop up 1 big octopus leg or 1-2 heads (preboiled) into chunks about 1/2 to 1cm square. Chop up about 50-70g net weight of red pickled ginger shreds (or use less fresh ginger), finely chop 1 bunch of scallions, get a 100g bag of tenkasu (tempura scraps - note that if you use homemade ones, they'll probably weigh more). The photo shows 40g finely grated Japanese yam, but experiment shows that takoyaki is MUCH better without it! Keep the yam for okonomiyaki, where it will more than earn its keep. Unorthodox but yummy - preheat the grill, oil (use a kitchen towel soaked in oil), and then quickly drop in the ingredients so that they sizzle just a bit before being covered with batter. No need to be neat and tidy with batter, as you gather the overflow into the ball as you go. When the batter is still liquid in the middle, sprinkle a little more soy sauce on if you want, and a few more ten-kasu (both these are optional). Once the batter is noticeably dry round the edges (like pancake) but sloppy in the middle, use one or two bamboo skewers to quickly loosen round the edge, then make a circular motion and flip it over. Don't do this too early, or you'll end up repeating the task, and the ball will collapse. Turned over by me and 2 boys - not very professional, but serviceable. Eat while hot! Still gooey in the middle - Osaka style. To serve, add thick Japanese worcestershire sauce, and top with ao-nori laver flakes, katsuo flakes, and if you must, aberrations like mayonnaise or ketchup. We've made these with whole-kernel sweetcorn and chopped up wiener sausage too...so don't be put off if you don't have octopus available. Dutch poffertje irons work well, though they are much smaller.

Nearly 1 am here, time for bath and bed for me - I just finished cooking most of breakfast and lunch, and had a giggle when I read the discussion on Marlena's blog. But I'm not telling, until we've eaten it! My translation work started yesterday, but my teaching starts tomorrow...and I leave the house before 7am, so I'll be back on line in about 15 hours time!

Ha ha, life being what it is, my kids, who haven't had whole dried sardines for a while, looked very suspiciously at the black squishy innards and said "Do we have to eat that?"

That was a nice, warming dinner! We had okayu (a fairly thick "zengayu") or rice congee, topped with chopped up leftovers from a dish of mixed greens dressed with soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic. The small fish are semi-dried sardines. On the plate at right is mizuna wrapped in bachi-maguro (bigeye tuna) dressed with soy sauce and wasabi, and a few sesame seeds. Also some oysters which sat in soy sauce and sake for about 20 minutes before being grilled, then served with crumbled nori and shreds of yuzu (citron) peel and a drizzle of soy sauce. My boys took several mikans into the bath (already fragrant with a big bag of dried mikan peel), while my husband and eye are sneakily eating strawberry Pocky with a big cup of green tea.

There is steambread "mushipan" (a homophone for "insect bread" to the delight of children and foreigners...). Desserts here are not eaten after meal but as "oyatsu" or the 8th-hour snack (4pm). The traditional thick, sticky, and filling sweets are things like * grandma's bota-mochi (a ball of plain rice covered in sticky bean-jam, * mochi rice cakes stretched with other ingredients blended in (sweet potato, pumpkin, etc.) * dried out mochi rice-cakes deepfried * sweet bean soups with grilled mochi or rice-flour dumplings... * rice-flour dumplings steamed then grilled (if you're lucky) and served with a clear sweetened soy-sauce topping (or bean-jam) * one of the few cakey items I can think of are dorayaki - a type of pancake, sandwiched together with beanjam (big favorite of my husband's) Prasantrin, I think you're right - "chef au saucier" or something along those lines. Transliterating katakana is a profession in itself. My husband's company got one of their automobile specialists to translate a fashion mag feature...and had to redo it themselves after he translated the "vents" in a tight kick-pleat skirt as "Benz"... Must get on - I really just came to look up a recipe I thought I had for oysters in miso, to go with tonight's rice congee (okayu). Kids have put the Christmas tree away, and are getting hungry...

This pudding talk is starting to get to me...temps expected to get below zero here overnight! I believe there's some regulation about sausages with fresh meat in them here, which is why the British Banger is unknown. ...speaking of which, I was just cleaning out my kitchen drawers...anybody know if collagen sausage casing might still be usable after 10 years?! I so envy your haul of sage - who was it said, "How can a man die who has sage in his garden"?. I've not been successful growing it in Japan .

That's <3 swollen lips from not cooling your mochi before you bit in, or puffs of steam coming out of your mouth???! Cans of demiglace, yes, I've seen them. Used to be one the standard "western cooking" items you could buy anywhere - cans of white sauce, and cans of demiglace!

Sweets...I was already planning to make red bean soup with mochi over the weekend, as it's a favorite of my husband's, but if possible, I'll try and make some an (bean jam) then...if I don't get it done over the weekend, I'm pretty sure there's a thread in the Japan forum where it could go. I used to make most of the classical sweets, but that was a long time ago!

OK...I'll see what I can do! My favorite way to make omuraisu is characteristically lazy. In a magazine somewhere, I read about making a "han-juku" omelet (still a bit runny inside), then splitting it and opening it out so that the not-quite-cooked inside spread out nearly flat. Then pile the hot ketchup-flavored chicken fried rice on, neaten it up, and INVERT onto the serving plate, tucking its skirts under a little - voila - omuraisu without the dry, rubbery omelet that often holds the dish back. Just back from a walk up to Hondoji - Hiroyuki, sorry I forgot to put the memory card back in my camera, and had also left it set on high resolution...did get a few shots, though many places were still shut. From "my" side of the station to "your" side then... The intersection on the east side of Kita-Kogane station, with the entrance to the SATY supermarket complex on the right, and the Picotee shops on the left. Downstairs is mostly junk, upstairs is a sourdough bread shop and a few cafes and noodle shops. The noodle shops have been there for ever, the cafes change hands alarmingly often. Does this tell you something about the Kogane dining-out culture?! Oh yes, son1 insisted that you would want to see that tangle of green wire in the foreground - it's one of the "Kogane Illumination" items. Local kids make wire frames with tiny lights on them in various shapes, and these are illuminated over Christmas and New Year. Son1's festive airplane is somewhere on the hedge you can see in the next photo. Right at the back of the picture above, you can see a green staircase. The next photo was taken on the deck at the top of those stairs, looking a little to the right over the roundabout towards Kita-Kogane station. To the far right, behind the bus, you can see the red awning of the Cozy Corner cakeshop, and far to the left is the Kobeya bakery - pretty standard fare for any station around here. Passing through the station walkway and heading west toward the Hondoji temple, we first find the Super Okkasan supermarket - making the most of its corner location to tempt commuters to break their cold, hurried walk home. Past the intersection, and past the little "Subaru" coffeeshop, the road has been widened, and tiles laid to make a walkway through the trees lining the road. On the left, the Biwatei chain Japanese restaurant had its New Year decorations out - young pine shoots, bamboo, and plum blossom with a "noshi" decoration on the front. This restaurant is our favorite place for family celebrations, because it has a carpark so we can bring father and mother in law to the door. Beyond the avenue of trees, the walkway narrows. Only one of the shops you asked about was open, Hiroyuki, but here it is - we were the only customers, as the poor guy's enthusiasm for giving away sweet potatoes made everybody else scurry past! Here's the shop, with dried goods and fresh vegetables to the left, pickles in the middle, and seasonal goodies to the right. Son1 is standing in the road, stuffing sweet potato in his mouth, and behind him, you can just see the gateway at the top of the steps that go down to the Hondoji entrance. Here's the shop-owner, selling charcoal-baked sweet potatoes, and son2 - who resigned himself to being called "girlie" by the old man! Behind to the left, is a pot of amazake, a mildly alcoholic and very sweet drink of fermented rice - like runny sweet porridge, with a bit of a bite! The signboard says "1 potato 300 yen", but I've never yet seen him charge anybody for one! Finally, here's the entrance to Hondoji - I think you used to be able to walk up to the pagoda area without paying (can't quite remember), but it would cost 1300 yen for the 3 of us to go in, so sorry, this is the end of the line! Foodwise, the stalls along the walkway sell purple and blue flower-shaped candies in early summer, when the hydrangeas are in bloom - the temple is known for them, though the Irises and red maple leaves are also pretty. Home again for us, and a snack of mikan oranges and a cup of hot soba-cha - soba seeds toasted and simmered with hot water. Rather like mugi-cha (barley tea, but a more toasty, aromatic flavor).