helenjp

My local shiitake grower's real passion is exotic poultry, and he sells a number of unusual eggs, but I'd have to wait till I get back to Japan to check exactly what. As for feed, anything with a lot of carotene in it (dark green weeds, for example) will work, but the cheap favorite is apparently marigold petals added to the feed...

Sounds like a good treatment for swedes....I'll have to buy some more, because my last one went into a pot of split green pea soup currently simmering in the slow cooker with a bacon hock. Recent lunches we've had... ...salt pork with tamarillo chutney sandwiches for lunch; potato/swede/apple mash, spinach with spring onions and mint, and a few small sausages Recent dinners... ...cassoulet with lamb and a little salt pork and dried beans and some of the dried tomatoes left from the weekend; scotch eye fillet steak with porterhouse mushrooms, baked potatoes, spinach. Mixed potato mashes, and carrot and parsnip mash - mash has suddenly re-appeared on my horizons, though my Japan-raised family are a bit mystified by it! Spinach is still very good now - the low-growing winter-raised spinach is something I look forward to whenever I'm in NZ in the winter. Surprises...maybe a bit late in the season for good apples - and almost impossible to buy dried beans in supermarkets, suburban or urban. Younger supermarket assistants were surprised to hear that beans could be anything but canned!

Maybe it's not quite fair to line up "mirin-fuu" products which often contain salt or other seasonings with the other mirin-lookalikes...I've used Aji no Haha, and would use it again if our local shops stocked it, and from memory that was a blend of fake mirin, sake, and salt....but I wouldn't want to be without real, good mirin, because there are dishes where I'd rather use that than sugar. Our New Year's kinton is made with mirin, because it's much less sickly that way...but you're right, it's pricey, so it takes a special occasion to ditch the sugar or the fake mirin and get that expensive little bottle out...

I usually use it in packed lunches, so I go for speed and impact rather than refinement, I'm sorry...usually panfried till crispy in a little sesame oil, then a quick swish of vinegar or lemon juice and soy sauce and some chili paste.

Err...Hiroyuki, I think if you are using your mirin to make furikake, it probably doesn't matter what you use to get the "sweet" component of your sweet/salty furikake. But I think it does matter in nimono or more lightly flavored dishes.

That Cobb Salad inspired me too - looks like the perfect end-of-winter salad for our family now in New Zealand! As for dressings, I tend to dress each item or group of items separately and then arrange them, as I often don't want a huge pool of dressing on the bottom of the plate. A sparing drizzle to finish is all that's needed! Conversely, I like the idea of putting the dressing down first and then layering over it. Would work well over a bed of hummus too....

We made sure to visit Manukau City Seafoods, only to find that it had changed hands. However, they still had a good range of smoked items, such as smoked roe (wonderful, soft, rich), smoked salmon, and smoked kahawai, as well as smoked mullet, which is much under-rated. We also grabbed a bag of pipis, a much bigger bag than anticipated, because we were thinking in Japanese "by the bag" terms, not NZ "by weight" terms! Pipis are a bit chewy, but they have a bacony taste which is GOOD! Right now I'm thinking about how to cook some small, sweet, swede turnips...mash...stew...salad?

I've heard good things about Emerson's. I look forward to seeing what wine is around, but husband prefers beer, and as I get older, a small bottle of beer packs much less punch than the equivalent in wine! A friend brought a Mills Reef 2003 Hawkes Bay Reserve Cab Sauv along, saying that it was one of his favorites, and it was indeed pleasant - smooth, full, and fragrant.

Funny thing is, I first heard of it from another foreigner in Japan! She got it from her kids kindergarten, which was heavily into natural foods for children. Red shiso around yakitori, yes! Even green shiso is good, but the red stands up better to heat, maybe??? Also red shiso-wrapped rakkyou pickles...love 'em!

So here we are in Auckland, and husband and I rolled into the local supermarket for the first time in twoyears....we'd FORGOTTEN that it's all but impossible to buy a single bottle or tinnie of beer! The "single bottle "options were restricted to Steinlager export and imported Sapporo, so we lugged a dozen brewed-locally-under-licence Oranjeboom lagers home, and husband got down to the task of reclaiming valuable fridge space, with a little assistance from my own lily-white hand. This was a very nice lager! Forgive the lack of "received terminology", but it came across as dryish with a very faint floral character - light, but not thin. Any recommendations? Also, I'm curious to know whether anybody else has the "dozen or nothing, ya wimp" problem at their local supermarket.

Hmmm...sounds like a place to visit with my husband and kids, who always want to eat meat-heavy when we first arrive, and then quickly decide they've had enough steaks and ribs etc. to last a while!

Hairy, flesh with faint flecks of brown, dense but soft texture...I think this probably is (was ) some type of taro! They're not all purple, and the different types vary a lot in size and coarseness of texture.

I'm amazed...not only at the spread, but at the fact that you all had the energy to cook and eat it in the heat that's hit over the past few days ! The chicken with negi sauce looks good though...

Composed salad for dinner...pix to follow as soon as son1 can be roused to dig the camera USB cable out of his room... It was well worth the tiny effort involved - it hit the table to oohs and aahs, and all disappeared, foiling my plans for LEFTOVERS for tomorrow. No fancy presentation or sauces as this was a top-speed effort - I was working all day, and husband had to race out early on neighborhood patrol with other members of the fathers' group at the local junior high school. Outer ring; long onions (think leeks) simmered in acidulated water and dressed with vinagrette; alternating with potato slices ditto. Potato slices topped with tomato, leeks interspersed with chunks of boiled egg and sticks of cucumber pickles. Black pepper ground over. Second ring: Vinaigrette-dressed mizuna leaf. Center: Boiled eggplant dressed in the liquor left from cooking a pork fillet - a little ginger and garlic, soy sauce, sweet rice wine. Meat sliced and drizzled with the cooking liquor, then arranged on top of the bed of eggplant. Red pepper.

Memory in overdrive here...the mention of dumplings made me remember pastry-wrapped dumplings! Also looking forward to cheap and abundant supplies of lemons to eat, drink and generally make merry with. (Squeeze a few lemons into your bath and then chuck the squeezed halves into the tub...climb in and simmer gently... ). More seriously...I plan to make lemon rice to go with a roast chicken (whole chickens are all but impossible to find in Japan). And then, what about winter and early spring entertaining - we often have friends come for a leisurely snacks and drinks followed by a light dinner. Smoked fish is great served hot in a chewy French roll, and luckily we have a good fish shop with many types of smoked fish and roe to choose from...but what else could we be offering our guests in August and September?

Snowangel, I think of composed salads as being in layers, so it's usually easy enough to extract a serving-size "chunk" of salad which offers a vertical sample of most ingredients. Differences between composed and mixed salads... larger ingredients? Dressing...do you think there are any rules here? I usually use a small amount of vinaigrette on the base salad, and a thicker dressing over the "top" ingredients. What about dressing served separately? Historical aspects - anybody associate composed salads with certain cultures or historical periods? (Thinks...what about a substantial composed salad for lunch today...pix later with any luck).

Speaking of lamb, spotted the tagine thread???

Hmmm...when I was a student, I remember I had a big thing for composed salads. It seemed impossible to have a party without a greek salad edged with red peppers and was it radishes, and decked with feta cheese and olives. I liked to make them on a huge shallow china platter which was originally part of a great-aunt's bedroom furniture - it originally held her china ewer and wash basin, both also popular items for large family meals in later times! I'm going to experiment with this when I get back to NZ and get hold of some feta cheese again!

So is pork a little cheaper in Oz than in Enz? I think it's cheaper there than it used to be, but still something of a luxury meat! (Thinks...mind you, pork crackling...it could be worth breaking the budget for!)

salami...classically made salami (that is cured, but not heated) is not supposed to be brought into Japan, if I remember correctly. I think it's the one issue that might cost my salami-loving husband his citizenship...

We're in South Auckland, and have precisely ONE walking-distance local eat-in place . However, thanks to the southwestern motorway, we go in to town as far as Newmarket fairly often and without difficulty. We've tried various places along the Great South Road, such as the Japanese restaurant near the Lido theatre. We enjoyed everything except the sushi - even the sashimi was fine last time we tried, but sushi . Tried one of the Japanese restaurants in Newmarket too (up by the old pools), which was very nice, but so trendily dark that our kids burned themselves on the hot rocks their grilled beef was served on, trying to locate the food on their plates in the pitch-dark under-the-stairs "just for families" spot we were shown to. Our kids are now teen and pre-teen, so the only quibble I have with restaurant food is how much of it boys that age can get through! However, it takes me twice as long to get from Newmarket into downtown or Ponsonby as it does to get from Sth Akl to Newmarket, so I'm easily discouraged from even trying. I notice from Iguaca's post that Parnell still seems to have its share of duds in among the famous names...Ponsonby used to be a much better place to just take your chances - wonder if that's still true. There are a few places that serve reasonable food in the south, if you don't go expecting ambience as well as food , and even more cafe-style places that will serve most of their dishes to stay or to go. I'll be interested to see what can be found.

I made a wasabi and a raspberry icecream the other day by way of experiment. As I really had no time to be doing any such thing, I used the same rich custard base for both, rather than making one sorbet and one icecream. A funny thing...I used wasabi paste from a tube so that I could get some little gritty bits of wasabi. No fresh wasabi root at the supermarket, anyway. Now I know that much "wasabi" (non-fresh) in Japan is actually imported horseradish, but the slightly funky stinky horseradish flavor came through much stronger in the icecream. It was quite nice with a squeeze of lemon juice over it though! Interested to hear how others make their wasabi icecreams..

1 cinnamon stick, 2-3 cloves, and a chunk of nutmeg...but cardamon and a very little lemon or orange peel might be nice instead of the nutmeg and cloves.

I've been thinking about winter food too...we'll be back in NZ from next week, and when the temperatures here are around 30 or higher, it's hard to imagine that in a week we'll be wanting warming, substantial food! What will we be looking forward to...roast parsnip and roast pumpkin...roast stuffed onions...leeks with sausage and thick pasta...thick NZ-style bacon...hot milo drinks...apple pie made with sharp apple varieties... ...and fish and chips with battered mussels on the beach in a howling gale! More to the point though, our winter eating will have to be dispatched smartly, before spring turnips and asparagus start appearing in the shops. What does eveybody else enjoy in the last weeks of winter/first weeks of spring, before the early summer fish or fruit and vegetables are back in stock? Edited to add: I nearly forgot! When so many fish are not at their best, kahawai are in season! Yum!

Chilled rice pudding, for want of a better description! A very small amount of rice cooked with a few whole spices until the milk reduced and began to caramelize, then chilled and served with a drizzle of honey.