helenjp

Torakris, I think that's my favorite way to eat nagaimo. This dish always seems to taste better at this time of year, too - maybe because it's more crisp and watery, and not as starchy and sticky as it gets in autumn?

They're called "suzu-kasutera" or bell-shaped sponge cakes.

3rd category beers a quick overview of the newest attempt to dodge booze taxes - beer made without wheat or malt! The mainstream these days is "happoushu", sometimes called low-malt beer. This is also designed to lower the tax cut. "Real" beer is traditionally brewed beer made from traditional beer ingredients. However, if you look closely, some beers contain rice or corn in addition to wheat/barley and malt. Microbrewed or "handmade" beer is a very new phenomenon here, because liquor manufacturing was only liberalized a couple of years ago. Most of those beers are not available at supermarket level, however - I'm surprised if I even see Ginga Kogen or Orion, such is the hold that Kirin/Asahi/Suntory/Sapporo have over the market. As far as I know, there hasn't been a low-alcohol light beer boom here, which is why the low-calorie (low-sugar/low-carb) beers are attracting attention from women. Some super-low-alcohol beers were introduced about 10 years ago, but attracted neither drinkers nor non-drinkers. My husband often complains that he can't find beer with an alcohol content below 5% in Japan, so the new low-calorie beers with alcohol content of 3.5 - 4.5% are quite a change. When we are in New Zealand, he often likes to drink a 4.5% beer, because he's at an age when a 6% beer packs quite a punch!

Keep refrigerated?Hmm. Home-made umeboshi have negligible amounts of sugar (maybe a little from the shochu used to prevent mold, but rarely more). However, commercial umeboshi often contain astonishing amounts of sweeteners. That's one reason why they don't keep as well. Also, katsuo-umeboshi don't keep well, sadly. I just wasted a huge amount of time making shisomaki umeboshi-paste roll-ups - I took some extremely sour (made from very ripe fruit) and wet umeboshi, and mixed them with some dark brown sugar, and removed the stones before wrapping them in salted and vinegared red shiso leaves. These tiny cigarette-shaped preserves seem to take up no space at all, and about half a pound (at least) of shiso leaves and 40 or more umeboshi fit into one small container!

I was standing in front of the beer cabinet at the supermarket in a late-night daze, when something titled "Slurp Burp" caught my eye. I looked again, and found that it was actually called "Slim Beer"... My women friends are telling me that they like the diet beers because they are low alcohol (from 3 to 4.5%). That's quite a big change for Japan, where the standard seems to be 5.5%. DH sticks to Nama-shibori Happoushu mostly, but he was almost ready to switch loyalties to something else when the manufacturers pulled it off the market. Tanrei-nama is a reluctant second choice... Draft One, a "type 3" beer, got a big thumbs down. Despite claims to prefer real beer, I rarely see real beer on people's tables anymore, even at parties...that's a big difference from even 5 years ago...but then again, maybe we just live in the wrong part of town!

Woah, our plums are dropping outside in the night, I *knew* I should have harvested them today! I'm planning to take some of my squishier umeboshi from previous years (the ones down the bottom of the pickle barrel) and make shisomaki out of them. Can't decide whether to add a little sugar or not... Anybody tried making home-made versions of those chewy ume snacks? Something like a fruit leather...

Good topped with a few slices of pickled goya (bitter gourd, bitter melon) too!

I also looked at Wasabi but didn't buy...can't remember much now, but think the recipes seemed very, very ordinary, despite lots of big pix.

Not one but TWO!!! airplanes! I have to show my son1 this...but maybe I shouldn't after what I told him was *not* possible when I made him an Airbus 380 cake for his birthday!! I'm really impressed that you took the trouble to make it as accurate as possible.

So what are you going to use your under-floor storage unit for?? I don't anticipate that we could ever buy a new kitchen, but one day I'd love to replace our tiny ancient fan with a rangehood and big extraction fan!

I haven't done it myself, but my students tell me that they have grown burdock in plastic bags, or more conveniently, plastic garbage bins. They said they used ordinary soil, but I imagine they put some fairly free-draining stuff down the bottom, especially as the burdock would take a while to extend its root right down to the bottom part of the container. If you pick a short-growing cultivar, it will be easier to grow, and will mature faster too.

...and a British ex-pat has a screen-name like "weka" because???????

I know this dish! It is good - but a little heavy for this time of year in Japan, just when the vegetable is at its cheapest!

It helps to remember that you want strong tea made with an ample amount of tea-leaves and strained promptly, not tea allowed to steep until it gets "strong". Lemon balm leaves are great for mellowing tea, while concentrated lemon juice seems to emphasize the tannin.

Been grilling chicken breasts here in Japan too! Best recently was simply slapping on a generous amount of coarse salt and grilling at a fairly high temperature - the skin was crisp, and the underside somehow crisp without getting dry.

Ah ha! Just as I have a pork vindaloo simmering on the stove, I find this thread! Pity I didn't find it a bit earlier, but I'll be making this again, considering the popularity of pork in Japan... Thanks for all the detail!

Barolo, that's not fare, I scrolled all the way down here to type "bread cheese apples" and you'd darn well done it before me!" Those are the things I find hard to do without in Japan. I think my husband's choices would be: Pork Pickles Noodles ...and I suspect my kids are planning on deciding their future citizenship according to the quality of sausage available!

chopped with natto! Chopped with a little bit of umeboshi and served on top of cold silken tofu with a nice thatch of katsuobushi and a drizzle of soy sauce/mirin mixture. Add a spot of mountain potato to the okra mix if you like. or...in fine rings with squid sashimi. It tempuras quite well. It goes well in Japanese-style curries. I like it in miso soup - blanch and pull it out before the bright green color fades, put it in your miso bowl and then pour the completed soup over it later.

Nasu cut in very thick rings, deepfried, patted to remove grease, then chilled either as is or in dashi, and served with a dab of yuzu-koshou. Inaka-ni: slashed finely all over, and simmered in dashi with a heavy handed seasoning of soy/mirin. Serve chilled. Mustard-dressed: Peel, split lengthwise, soak in water, boil, drain, dress with a mustardy vinaigrette, chill. Cucumber-dressed. Boil as above, then serve with a dressing of finely grated cucumber, white onion, and lemon juice, salt. Shira-ae dressing: Boil as above, but when drained, drop into dashi lightly seasoned with soy sauce and chill. Serve with a tofu/ground sesame shira-ae sauce, a little heavy on the sesame side. Steamed: Halve and slice vertically, soak, then steam briefly. Chill, arrange overlapping slices concentrically on a plate, dress with grated ginger/garlic/soy sauce/vinegar/sesame oil, and sprinkle with chopped scallions.

Yes, the two are different cultivars, but they cook much the same, except that chingensai is milder (or at times more boring...) than bok choy. Our chingensai doesn't have green stems - though there is a faint tinge of green to the white. I like rice with soupy veg and rice congee etc. - sounds like an excellent taste/texture match, thank you! The abalone idea (which I will definitely try when next in NZ) indirectly led me to experiment with some leftover potsticker stuffing. I stirfried the stems with that, and then added the greens and tossed them. That was a slight change, anyway! Thanks for the quick stirfry ideas too - the less time between shopping bag and dinner plate, the better, as far as my son1 is concerned. Now how about stirfrying it with fresh yuba and shredded pork/pickles/seafood...hmmm...

Seems there are more names for this vegetable than recipes. But it's so cheap...3 for $1.00...I buy it, and then when it gets onto my kitchen counter, I sigh. Inspire me, please!

Going slightly nuts here with grilled pork belly skewers. Cut them up into large dice and thread on slender skewers. Grill till crrrrrispy! Thingswe've skewered between pork chunks so far: sage leaves, new-crop burdock root, green chili peppers...

I would make ume vinegar drink with them. You can cut the amount of sugar way down, if you are prepared to compensate by allowing the drink to mature longer before drinking. The finished product makes a very fine long drink for that exhausting humid heat of summer. The usual method is equal parts by weight of green ume, rock sugar, and cider vinegar. Soak ume 6-8 hours or so in cold water then drain and dry, then layer with sugar in a clean (preferably sterile, but ume probably kills anything immoral anyway) container, pour vinegar over to completely cover all fruit. Cap securely, place in a cool place out of direct sunlight, and leave about 1 month. (Or a year...as you like). If you use normal crystallized sugar, it may not dissolve without agitating the container daily, and the finished vinegar may be cloudy. You can buy this type of sugar at Chinese groceries. You can use any mild vinegar, but cider vinegar seems to be the most popular. You can also use any kind of sweetener, but be sure that your container is clean and storage area clean and dry if you use honey. If you age this drink for 2-3 years, it will darken, so don't be afraid to use heavy-flavored sugars or honeys if you prefer them. Some people take the ume out after 1 or 3 months, or even after 6 months, to avoid getting too much tartness or almond flavor from the pits - this is true of umeshu too. You can continue to age the drink (vinegar or umeshu) after the ume have been removed. Ume from ume vinegar or more usually umeshu are nice in fruit cakes or pound cakes, or chopped into apple dishes.

We're having saba with salt tonight - though I think it's best made with ma-saba. Hiroyuki, I notice a recipe in your link for saba simmered in soy-based seasonings, then dried and deep friend and garnished with negi-miso. I remember that this is a great style of cooking for fancy bento, so I must try it with saba. Torakris, love that saba and kochujang...must go and buy another saba!

These seem to have been around for a while - I was given a stand-alone element about 15 years ago, but it was both weak and slow to respond. At the time, they were presented in Japan as being safer than gas for elderly live-alones. Suddenly they're baaaaack, and apparently much more efficient than before. In Japan, they form part of a puzzling drive for "all-electric" kitchens, which I can only think is some campaign to soften us up for a few new nuclear power plants . I don't think they're such a great idea for elderly cooks, because the typical cookware is so heavy that you'd need a wide heatproof area around your cooktop so that you could slide, rather than lift, cookware on and off the heat. That's not about to happen in tiny Japanese kitchens, so I imagine Japanese grannies will continue to love their light, but badly dented and buckled aluminum pans. The no-ambient heat thing...hmmm, but doesn't the hot cookwear and food radiate heat anyway? (Picky, I know).