helenjp

Hmmm...rarely have enough strawberries to worry about how long it takes to hull them, but the method that works for me is to use not the tip but the heel corner of the blade - easy to just dig it in behind the hull, and then a flick of the wrist brings the hull and core out together.

I agree with you about oatmeal, it tastes just as good (in some cases better than) rice congee with savoury things. Your blog is making me terribly homesick. I think it's the fact that the emphasis on seafood and the nearness and accessibility of East Asian food is just part of everyday life. I'm interested to see that you like a middle eastern twist to your cooking too...it seems to be part of OZ & ENZ food culture, and it works in well with Japanese food too I'm happy to report! Love that tri-color quinoa...I　was just thinking about cold quinoa summer dishes, so I'm going to see how a cold version works, thanks. I haven't been to Sydney since it was embracing a kind of Emerald City phase, so I'm enjoying your blog very much. Love

Live music in a restaurant...I sometimes go to a coffeeshop/bistro that has live music. Sound is mostly at the discretion of the performers, but boy, they often need something to beat the kitchen noise! These are performances in a restaurant, not dining with background music, so I　find it trying to pick out the music over the crashing and clattering that pours through the open kitchen door! Maybe noisy restaurants are trying to keep older customers at bay, since older people generally have a harder time distinguishing speech from background noise?

How much nuka to leave - pull out of pickle bed, shake over the sink. That much. Once you've rinsed a pickle, you should eat it ASAP. You can buy "ready to serve" nuka pickles in this condition, but you can't buy them pre-rinsed,and I've never seen leftover (rinsed, cut) nuka pickles come back out of the fridge looking like anything I want to meet on my plate. Zucchini - snap. But still pricey, just more available. Sigh.

"Home from Asia"...I guess the perfect popsicle would be something based on Kalpis or a similar sweetened fermented milk drink concentrate. I bought a pack on my way home tonight, intending to make something for teenage son to snack on when he gets home from school. A plum sorbet (maybe with red wine and perhaps spiced), plain kalpis, and kalpis/banana/honey is the plan. Silicone ice pop sticks - these are what I　plan to use.

This is all fascinatingly exotic for me. Imagine putting fried chicken in a scone...hmmm...!

So how are all the popsicle makers going? What are you all making? I just found some silicone molds for cone-shaped squeeze-out stickless popsicles. Do these develop smelly taints? I also saw a tempting book on Mexican paletas (popsicles) that looks like lots of fun. The plan is to make unsweetened popsicles too...up to and including plain black tea or coffee, sage tea, lemon or vinegar etc, just for a cold mouthful when it's too hot for sweet stuff.

Is this different from a Dutch oven?

If you wash in cold water and you REALLY want to have cleaner towels, you could try a gentle boil-up in a big pan. How often do you change your kitchen towels?

We've also got a 3-week old nuka bed on the go, and it's just starting to come along nicely. So far eggplant, cucumber, and carrot. I'm thinking of putting some young ginger in mine...

It should work...it might perhps be less flavorful, but worth a try.

Lidded bento boxes, yes, but the nice ones are not microwaveable. I bought a large single-tier square one which is nice for composed salads but of course the last person home gets a jumble of leftovers in one corner. Stainless steel tiffin box, I do have one 3-tiered one, and they are indeed very nice objects, but I'd really like something that doesn't advertise the fact that my family are basically eating two bentos per day, and in fact all three meals come straight out of the fridge...

Fruyit peels - I've only ever heard of adding this to bran for making takun, actually. They might add a small amount of pectin, which with calcium might keep pickles crisper, but it sounds a bit optimistic. Mustard - I do add this, but only a little. You can always add more later. If you are using chilis you might not need it anyway. Beer etc. Not needed. Kombu - I　second what John said, if you want to add that kind of stuff, save it for winter when spoilage is not an issue. Same goes for shiitake. Basically a mature and nicely pampered nuka bed will have plenty of flavor of its own. Most of the other stuff is window dressing. What you do need is spare dry bran, as some will disappear when you remove pickled vegetables, and the bed will get wet from vegetable juices anyway, so every 10-20 days you will need to top it up a bit.

Summer approaches...vacation doesn't . Here I am as usual on a Monday, working at home, and doing as much of the week's cooking as I can. Every night, my modest, Japanese-size fridge is loaded up with: Breakfast - lidded dishes of yogurt and fruit (and sometimes cheese/mayo sandwiches ready for quick toasting). For this, I use small handled Chinese instant noodle cups with flat china lids. Lunch - 3 cooked lunches, bar the rice (cooked fresh in the morning). 1 container = 1 serving. Dinner - at least the beginnings of dinner, such as fish with a sauce on top, or sliced meat. Unless I　get home first, early diners tend to lazily ignore containers of vegetables or salad, and just eat rice and meat. Not. Good. Enough. I really want to have dinner in individual servings, but without the dismal mood that comes from eating out of a plastic container. The containers need to be pretty, but also compact and preferably stackable - there is just not that much room to store 3 meals plus makings of 2-3 more days' worth of food in that fridge! Since this is summer, fridge-to-table is enough, but fridge-microwave-table would be even better. Speed is one issue, minimizing clean-up is another, so transferring servings to an eating plate is not my first choice. So wotcha got?

One of my students mentioned these in an essay (!) recently, piquing my interest. I gather you an use silicon molds for these...has anybody tried that? P.S. Oops, I see there is an extensive discussion starting p.3 of this topic.

It seems that everything white and everything translucent and transparent was beloved of the Edwardians...add that to the newfangled refrigeration technology, and aspic on every fashionable dinnertable is a given! I've made cold fish dishes with self-gelling stocks, and the gel is soft and tasty as well as very pretty...who could fault it as an early summer dish?

The type of dashi used for miso soup differs from region to region. Assuming that clear oups use ichiban-dashi and noodle soups mostly use niban-dashi, my conclusion is....that the same amount of hondashi is used, regardless of whether you are thinking of an ichiban or a niban-dashi. It might be more useful to consider all hondashi as niban-dashi, since even the best instant dashi isn't likely to have the "top notes" of fragrance that an ichiban-dashi does. If you really want something close to an ichiban-dashi, you might try one of the liquid concentrates instead of hondashi powder. That said, there are a few "tennen" (natural) "mutenka" (no-additives) instant dashi powders around, and while they raise my eyebrows, they do a good enough job for early-morning lunch-making sessions. Meanwhile, from the Ajinomoto site, "Hondashi katsuo and konbu awase-dashi" contains MSG, salt, sugars, katsuo powder, kelp extract, and yeast extract. 調味料（アミノ酸等）、食塩、砂糖類（砂糖、乳糖）、風味原料（かつおぶし粉末、こんぶエキス）、 酵母エキス Their liquid katsuo-base dashi concentrate "Katsu-maro" contains: Salt, fermented seasoning, katsuo, sugar, katsuo extract, kelp stock, MSG, sorbit, souring agent, and xanthan gum. 食塩・発酵調味料・かつお節・砂糖・かつおエキス・昆布だし・調味料（アミノ酸等）・ソルビット・酸味料・糊料（キサンタン）

I went to the Japan Alps for a conference a few days back, and while I was there bought an "Apricot Vinegar Drink". It was an apricot vinegar plus apricot juice - very good.

Same plant, different cultivars. Mi-zanshou = Asakura sanshou and variations such as Budou sanshou. These are thornless, and the berries (fruits) are reputed to be particularly aromatic.Female trees harvested. Ha-zanshou & Hana-zanshou = not Asakura cultivars. Have thorns. Male trees harvested. Female (top) and male (bottom) photos.

Smaaaall kitchen counters - try a cutting/pastry board big enough to cover your sink. I second Chris' comment, thinking that I could do with the inspiration at this produce-starved time of year past spring and not yet into summer...but you're obviously not suffering . Love the toes on your kitchen floor...great indication of scale!

Sorry, I've been away for a few days. Nuka is hard to get outside Japan. I can't see from the Mitsuwa link whether or not the bag includes salt or other seasonings, but it may well do. One more option - use home-produced bran from a home-polishing machine. I had much more bran than I needed for pickles, but the excess is great for compost heaps (just don't let it form a solid lump of bran in the middle of the compost). Loose fabric bags of bran are also traditionally used in bathwater, and also to clean and polish floors and furniture (the plan is that the oils and some starch work through the fabric, while the messy bran is contained. I did lightly toast our home-made rice bran. It was much easier to manage than any shop-bought bran, to my surprise - the right cultures grew well, and the bed seemed less prone to getting smelly or moldy. If you can wangle a bit of rice bran off a restaurant or other place likely to polish their own rice, you can make a smallish pickle bed and keep it in the fridge so that you don't get overwhelmed with the constant need for management in summer.

Actually early summer is when tea is harvested - and the slightly astringent but aromatic flavor is great for this time of year, when citrus is disappearing and summer fruit isn't here yet - fresh, astringent, and aromatic. Also keeps well, which is a concern with fruity cakes in summer. Tea-flavored (good quality Earl Grey?) cake with orange or orange flower water? Alternatively, a green tea (or matcha) cake might be refreshing and pretty?

Yes, I'm thinking of one communal table, as mentioned in another topic, specifically to provide for those who like to sit around. The characters, both customers and staff, have to "work" on the topic of the textbook while in the cafe, so they (and I) will be spending long hours there. I remember a long-gone cafe near my university that had an open fire with large floor cushions - people would set their orders on a tray on the floor and chat in front of the fire...that functioned pretty much like a communal table! Outdoors vs indoors...it's a hard one. There's the garden furniture approach and the rustic picnic table approach, but if I could, I think I'd like something like an old wooden settle up against the wall, so that customers can observe passersby in security and comfort! I think the perfect cafe should always have a place to park bicycles, and a bicycle-friendly decor. Cash registers - Antique wooden cash registersare my favorite...I really like the drawer type, with smooth wooden bowls for coins, but they are not so photogenic.

Thank you Michaela - the plan is to create a look that definitely can NOT be labeled as any specific nationality. I like the fold-out doors on the Cafe Jorden...The Clemens Bridge area is a really nice mix of old and modern too. I wonder what the people want their first glimpse to be when they step towards a cafe door. I have to admit, I don't want it to be the cash register!

Today I plan to start drawing the art for a smallish (under 100 pages) textbook. There are a LOT of illustrations, and they feature a group of students in a coffee-shop. Please help me visualize that coffeeshop! (And later, a cheapish pub-restaurant). The characters are not a problem, but I only have a weak visual image of the exterior, interior, counter area, and tables. It needs to look comfortable, affordable, and desirable in an accessible sort of way! In particular, I can't get my head around the "right" sort of chairs and tables. Tables big enough to spread out a laptop and/or documents, chairs that look comfortable enough to spend time in, visually interesting yet not a pain to draw! Now's your chance to unleash your fantasy coffee-shop on the world... Here's a start - there might be a huge engraved Turkish silver coffee-pot for counter pours.