helenjp

The only food jokes I can remember are either totally sick or impure. No, wait... There's an izakaya that used to be near the station, closed down years ago, but it was always a popular place for men on their way home to drop in for a drink and a snack. It was cheap, but the beer was cold and the food was hot, except in summer when it was the other way round. One day late in the summer, a couple of friends were enjoying a beer and a few edamame, just idling the time away, until suddenly they realized it was getting late. Hey, says one of them, bring me a bowl of miso soup with clams, will ya? The other guy wasn't so sure this was the place to order shellfish, but the first guy just grinned - there are never too many clams in the soup at a cheap izakaya! Sure enough, when the bowl arrived, there was nothing to be seen in it but soup. The guy slurped away happily, but his friend kept hanging over the bowl, peering into the cloudy soup...and sure enough, there they were! Two clams! And out of their shells, too, probably yesterday's left-overs shucked and re-used. "Don't drink it!" he yelled, "It's more than your life is worth!" But his friend continued his contented slurping, and finally put down the bowl with a contented sigh. "The clams,...you didn't...?" he asked, but his friend just shrugged. "Clams? There were no clams - those were just your eyeballs reflected in the soup, stupid."

>>you're allergic to soy<< Yes, I am, and if I see another egg, I'll shoot it! Our loyal farmers dumped a whole lot of cabbage to stop it getting too cheap, and were rewarded by tropical cyclones and ash eruptions which laid waste to PLENTY of cabbage and kept the prices as high as they could have desired, had they had anything left to sell! Chicken breast is always cheap here, and I often cook it either Egyptian sofrito style (not Spanish sofrito), simmered in water with olive oil and plenty of sliced lemon; or a similar Japanese variation with sake and ginger. Sofrito is then good cubed into bean or tomato/okra salads, and the Japanese version is good shredded over cucumber, with a spicy peanut sauce.

OK, now how about CHEAP low/mod carb cooking? I don't get paid again till November... In Japan, recent health scares of one kind and another have driven up the price of eggs and almost every kind of meat, and hot weather is keeping the usual seasonal fish away from Japan's fishing grounds. Drat! Those sauries, mackerel, and sardines heard me tapping my gutting knife on the chopping block, I'm sure. So what else does a cheapskate eat?

What type of bento box do you like using? pictures of traditional and modern bento boxes Does anybody actually use the mage-wappa bentwood type? I have actually used the wicker basket type, with a cloth liner they are great for onigiri. I'll try and take some pix of our favorites - husband likes a flat plastic one with removable inner boxes for rice and side dishes (he doesn't like flavors to mix), but I worry that the food stays lukewarm inside them for too long. For the kids and myself, I now use a two-tier aluminum number - the second tier is a plastic insert. I like the fact that aluminum cools down quickly. Son1 sometimes uses a supersized flat aluminum box with a single flat divider. Spying on people at work, I notice that pretty round enameled tins with pop-off plastic lids (kitchen storage type) are popular with women. Many of the women also use their kids' discarded cutesy chopsticks because they are small and portable. I have a pair that say "Chew your food" on them... For outings, I actually own a lacquered two-layered "gyouraku" bento box, but I never take it out, because it is too delicate to be sitting in the sun, exposed to gritty dust at school sports days and the like! To take a nice meal to the aged Ps, I might use my 3 tier lacquered melamine New Year's box (deliberately chosen not to be too seasonal in design), but the plastic ones with removable inner boxes allow certain dishes to be reheated in a microwave quickly and cleanly

What about those strips of chewy dried sweetish ume paste (can't think what they're called). Great for school trips because there is no seed to dispose of!

If using for smoothies, watch out for seeds - they are astringent if crushed!

I dunno, it's been around for 25 years or so! Azuki ice cream was around then too, but strangely, you had to go to upmarket places that served icecream "on the half shell" to get flavors like mikan or yuzu. I think powdered tea is the usual component, because it's so easy -- green tea ice cream using an infusion is rare, even in Japan, and my impression is that it became popular after black tea creams and icecreams became popular in the '80s. ...but I'm not swearing on it!

I think you're right - just drain the chicken after marinading. Great to hear all the details. You can play with the marinade, adding western spices even, and you can also add things to the batter - these help the kara-age taste better when cold. For batter, try fresh herbs, but only a little, as they will burn more easily - chopped kinome (baby sansho leaves) or beni-tade (tiny red shiso sprouts, found with the sashimi condiments in the vegetable department), or shreds of yuzu peel. Easier to use are dried spice mixes like yuzu-sansho or shichimi-togarashi. Even a scattering of black sesame seeds is nice. Like Kristin I use Canola oil for frying - commercial places use natane-abura (rapeseed oil, basically the same thing). The usual sarada-abura vegetable oil is a mix of soy and rapeseed oil - lots of people do use it for frying, but it is harder to get the batter crisp without being greasy.

Clematis tangutica, that's at least very common in NZ, if not unique to NZ. I'd like to ask a favor...does anybody have any queries on how to grow Japanese herbs...other vegetables and food plants too, but particularly herbs because they are ready to harvest so soon. The answers would be a while coming, but I'd love to know exactly which plants are popular and what issues arise when growing Japanese plants in other countries. I teach English at the horticulture department of a public university here in Japan (at least, that's half of what I do!) and am working on putting up an English website with tips on growing Japanese plants, written together with my students (that's the long-range plan...it might be a private website for a while). This university is not in a rural area, and the students are baby researchers rather than baby gardeners. I get hold of them before they have really started their horticultural studies - they don' know much, in other words! However, they have plenty of people and resources to provide them with the answers, and it's a big kick for them to realize that they can use English to communicate with people who want to hear what they have to say, so ask away! Term starts in a few weeks, and I plan to get them working on it straight away. I also posted this question on the Asian vegetables forum at Gardenweb.

Heinz is certainly pretty common here. I don't come from a ketchup culture, so it all tastes the same to me Recently you can buy chunky ketchup, which is a blatant attempt to get consumers to associate red wallpaper paste with blooming fields of produce. I don't go for slashed omuriaisu though, I prefer for it to keep its secrets until the fatal moment. It's a lot better if you fry up a little onion/chicken/mushroom/tomato and add that to the rice with plenty of pepper and just a little ketchup. But the whole point is getting the omelet to the barely squishy stage, slashing it open and allowing it to spread, then dolloping the rice mix in the middle and somehow turning it out in the perfect omuraisu shape. Taste is just not an issue!

My DH was also determined to cook me out of morning sickness, but actually, a house with NO cooking smells may be what she needs! Maybe try a cooking session after dinner, and leave it all ready in the fridge so it can be eaten cold next day? This discussion just came up elsewhere, and cold food seems to help, whether cold subway sandwiches or cold smoothies. There may be a very narrow range of stuff she feels like eating at the moment - just go with it, don't fret about nutrition unless she is severely ill. Asking her what she wants and talking about food in detail are probably a bad idea...if she can tell you and then not think about it till she's eating it, so much the better! A rest (in a room a LONG way from the kitchen!!) before meals can help. If she can't eat what you've prepared, try not to feel bad about it...she WILL be more than ready for you to be in the kitchen when she's looking after babies and toddlers.

This one puzzles me too...I have diagnosed allergies to certain foods such as rice, and soybeans, which are pretty unavoidable in Japan The usual diagnostic test is a scratch skin test - which may or may not be a good predictor of what will happen when you actually eat something. So I stay away from edamame (green soybeans), but small amounts of fermented miso or soy sauce are OK. I think of the allergies I was diagnosed with as "sensitivities" rather than a true allergy, which would produce a severe and predictable response every time. If I get tired or sick they're much worse, and for what it's worth, moderately low-carb eating seems to have increased my tolerance considerably. I do feel shy about turning something down, because it isn't a case of life or death, it's a case of a stomach-ache and a rash...maybe severe; or then again if I'm in good health, maybe barely any reaction.

JAZ & Tejon, thanks for the recipe and for the photo! I have a slightly different brown butter cookie, I think JAZ' recipe is better...but brown butter does make GREAT cookies! The texture is much crisper than a regular cookie, if I recall correctly. Now the trick is to make them look as good as they taste.

Forgot to mention that the whole point of marinading them is that they will keep in the fridge for at least a few days. should stretch your farmer's mart treasures a bit longer.

Just remembered two ways to keep vegetables on the menu when time is short. 1) Marinaded salads of cooked vegetables - Boiled or grilled vegetables dropped hot into a vinaigrette-based marinade, garlic, spices, herbs etc to your taste. 2) Japanese marinades, deepfried, grilled, or sometimes boiled vegetables dropped hot into a marinade of soy sauce and vinegar, 1:1 or 1:2. Add hot mustard or shreds of dried chili as you like.

Cold, topped with finely grated daikon, a pack of natto (seasoned with soy and a touch of dashi or one of those sauce packs that come with it and mixed well before being dumped on the noodles), a scattering of finely chopped negi (Japanese dividing onion).

I agree, you might be frying at too high a temperature - a chunk of dough should not hit the bottom of the heated oil, but neither should it bounce up so fast that it never goes below the surface. I like the double fry method too. Some darkening seems to be unavoidable if you use soy in your marinade, but it could also be caused by very hot oil, or too thin batter that doesn't seal the juices in. I don't marinade with the soy too long, as I think it makes the meat tough. Usually I put sake and some ginger with the meat when I buy it, and add extras within 30 minutes of frying. Katakuri-ko is traditionally the starch of the dogtooth violet root, but supermarket katakuri-ko is always potato starch. I usually use about half katakuriko and half "weak" flour...but it depends on your own tastes. I don't like a really bready batter, so I don't use baking powder...in fact I prefer the tatsuta-age style, with the chicken tossed in katakuri-ko, excess shaken off, and fried in fairly hot oil. Thanks for bringing up the topic, with Sports Day season nearly on us!

The owner of the Chinese grocery I worked at years ago used to get a panelbeater to "pre-season" the woks with a blow-torch...can't give you any details, sorry, but a blow torch might also help get rid of burned-on old gunk so you can brush it clean and start again. I've been told that you should heat up a new wok full of oil until it smokes, then allow it to cool in the pan, discard the oil, wipe dry, and leave. However, I would be inclined to heat the wok evenly to cure the film of oil remainins.

Sure that's not a misprint for "two days"? Unseasoned Kombu and kombu dashi tend to spoil very fast.

Definitely the indulgent path - as a child, it seemed like a waste to eat Christmas pudding hot on the day, when I knew I was just reducing the amount that would be available cold to fry in butter for breakfast on subsequent days!

Stuff like liver, definitely. Also figs with yogurt cheese and a walnut inside...squishy tomato sandwiches...Trouble is, my son1 has inherited my tastes. I really *hate it* when I leave lunch till I've got just a bit more work done, and then he gets home from school unexpectedly early - just as I'm turning off the gas in happy anticipation...

Err...me?! Except, I didn't recognize them from your description of them! Chocolate? Marshmallow creme in jars (I keep hearing about this stuff, but have yet to see it...gotta visit the US one of these days!) About 10 years ago, I found 2-3 recipes over a short period of time which had things like dark, spicy pumpkin cookies with sour cream or cream cheese fillings. There was a cocoa cookie, true, but I liked the pumpkin one so much that I forgot all about the "original". The ones I fell in love with were a sort of portable one-man carrot cake without the carrots, and with more crunch. There was never any question of *not* loving them... And returning to the original question, given that the cookies have to look good when you open the box, how about butter cookies with stripes or checkerboards - just press the different flavored dough strips together and cut out? Coffee, chocolate, and vanilla taste good as well as looking good, but add a titch of powdered sugar to the vanilla dough, or it will not cook as crisp as the other flavors. Or add a little powdered green tea to about 1/3 of your basic butter cookie dough, and press a ball of that onto a ball of plain dough, flatten 'em, and press a few shreds of lemon peel into the green ball before baking. Gold leaf looks good too, but lemon peel definitely tastes better! Also, weather's a bit warm yet, but gingerbread cookie dough rolls better when aged. I've aged it for a week or two in a cool place, and it rolls without sticking, bakes smoothly, and tastes great! I imagine the same is true for any honey or molasses type cookie. Even a plain peanut butter cookie tastes heaps better with shreds of lemon peel mixed into it, and a few on top to garnish.

I've been hanging fire on this one, because I'm not a huge ramen fan. The broth recipe I use is at least 20 years old, and fashions change in ramen broth as in everything else! There are two main styles in ramen broth: the eastern/northern chicken broth, and the western/southern pork broth style. Then there's the people who use both pork ribs AND chicken carcasses to make their broth, and those weird types who add dashi. Tokyo ramen is mainly a chicken broth style, but tonkotsu (pork bones) ramen has become more popular over the years. This is the recipe I've used for 20 years... (4 servings) 2 chicken carcasses, 4 good-sized pork bones (ribs or feet) the green half of a negi (Japanese dividing onion), 1 lump of fresh ginger 8 or so black peppercorns 4 pints water Use a cleaver to split up the bones as needed, slice the ginger into thick slices, split the onion vertically. Put bones and water onto heat, and bring to a good simmer, and simmer for 2-3 hours, until soup has reduced by 1/3 to 1/2. Strain through a cloth. If you want a rich, whitish Kyushu style soup, put the lid on and allow the pot to boil for a while, and don't strain. Salt broth very lightly at this point. Seasonings are placed in the bottom of the bowl, and vary a little according to the saltiness of whatever you add to the noodles. Assuming 1/2 pint broth per person, you will add 1-2 tsp of light soy sauce (usukuchi shoyu) and about 1/2 tsp or so of Japanese toasted sesame oil (goma-abura). Salt or miso can be used in place of soy sauce, and lard is sometimes added to a chicken ramen, but shouldn't be needed for a pork broth. A very basic ramen would be...seasonings in bottom of bowl, cooked noodles (boiled in fresh hot water, not in the broth), and a topping of sliced Chinese roast pork, chopped negi or scallions, and maybe a litle boiled spinach, some slices of menma (bamboo shoot in a flavored broth), or half a boiled egg.

Freezer space is always small in Japan, so most people don't freeze bulky items - no reason why not, though. I think freezing dashi sometimes causes it to go cloudy, but in most cases that isn't a problem.

Talking of physiology affecting diet, I notice that one of my sons instinctively eats less carbohydrate and more vegetables and protein. That must be what he needs, because starchy food makes him put on weight, but never affects his rice-guzzling brother! Sour foods...fish panfried with curry spices or garlic, then doused in vinegar and finished on a high heat. Works extra well with butterflied fresh sardines.