sartoric

Here’s another episode in the series “things in a bowl”. This is pork gyoza (from Aldi) with broccolini and bean sprouts in bone broth. While I usually love everything Aldi, I won’t be buying these mean little things again. Perhaps Japan has spoilt me.

I’m lucky to have a friend who hobby farms a small herd of goats. This is a Meera Sodha recipe for a simple goat and potato curry. Served with cumin rice, a bit of salad and my homemade mango chutney. Please excuse the poor lighting.

Despite the heat here, I needed room in the freezer section, so the osso buca had to come out. Served with mash and garlic asparagus.

There is virtually nothing authentic about this Thai green chicken curry, but it’s how we like it with potatoes and spinach.

I live in Australia, so doubt you would have access to this brand - Anko.

Almost the same as yesterday, sautéed onion, garlic, wombok and mushrooms with sliced chicken on brothy rice.

Thanks @KennethT that makes sense. My current single burner is a cheap Chinese made one. Soon though, we will be renovating the kitchen and installing a 4 burner. This is something I’ll have to watch out for.

That’s interesting, I’m now wondering if there’s a way to turn off this alarm.

Lucky you, mine starts immediately.

I am new to induction cook tops and wonder what people do when needing to briefly lift the pan (like to swirl oil or flip an omelette). Do you just listen to the damn thing scream at you ?

I’ve been enjoying these brothy rice with veg and protein dishes lately. This one is boned chicken drumsticks marinated with white miso, soy, honey and gochujaro, some baby pak choy and bean sprouts in chicken bone broth.

A freestyle laksa with prawns, bok choy and fried puffed tofu.

Hot sandwich with roast chicken and gravy in the panini press.

All this talk of turkey got me hankering. Thanksgiving is not a thing in Australia, and sourcing a turkey would be difficult this time of year. Come Christmas, there’ll be plenty. I didn’t make stuffing because I didn’t have enough sourdough crumbs in the freezer, but I did make a herb butter to smoosh under the skin. Served with potatoes, carrots, fennel, red onions and peas. Plus gravy, lots of gravy, and leftovers, lots of them too.

It was interesting in that half of the mustard seeds were crushed to reveal the yellow inner seed. I used lots of garlic finely chopped, a bit of chilli powder, turmeric, curry leaves, juice of half a lemon, fresh chilli and spring onions to garnish. Some of her recipes are available on line. This one is called “King Prawns with Garlic and Mustard seeds”. I hope you can find it, it’s very quick to make and delicious.

I love Meera Sodha’s book Made in India, this is her mustard seed and garlic prawns. So quick, easy and tasty. Served with planned overs of cumin rice, smashed cucumber salad and sesame green beans (also Meera Sodha). Almost a no cook night after a 37°C and plaster dust everywhere day.

Our local pub has recently changed hands, also menu, staff and furniture. Pretty decent Caesar salad and an acceptable brisket sandwich. We will continue to frequent every week or so.

I just see more rabbit holes here 🤣

On other days we had a considerably lighter lunch and pigged out at dinner. You will see from the furniture, this was not a high end establishment. Soup and smashed cucumber salad to start. Horse sashimi was surprisingly delicious, and it looks like some salad with egg. And I really didn’t need these, but who could resist grilled boneless chicken tails ? I could feel my arteries hardening. Classy place, you could tell by the furniture.

I think we had around 5 days in Tokyo, some were spent just wandering around - 20,000 steps without even noticing. We popped into many eateries and often had two small lunches. Lunch one, gyoza and chicken karaage. Lunch two, a snack of edamame, fish cakes, soup and pork. We didn’t buy a single Kit Kat, despite the unusual choices.

Dinner last night was spicy baked chicken wings, using a Nagi Maehashi recipe. I bolstered the chilli and reduced the sugar, as I usually do. Served with leftover rice, sesame green beans and her smashed cucumber salad (with the addition of chilli flakes).

What is this miracle box ? It’s not the cardboard kind carrying sheets of A4 paper, that’s for sure 🤣

What does one make for dinner on a 35°C day after listening to duelling power tools for 6 hours ? Ricotta and spinach lasagna is not the most obvious choice.

Outside our hotel every night, the baked sweet potato man turned up. We were usually coming home after dinner and didn’t get to try one. He had a wood fired oven on the back of that truck. This is our hotel from the TMGB Here’s a view of Fujisan from the observation deck. Not a bad view given it’s 100 kms away. Tokyo stretches on forever. There are huge speakers up high on the building, we think they are earthquake warning systems. One cool thing we did in Tokyo is take a class in kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending something with gold to make it beautiful. The principal of wabi sabi is appreciation of beauty that is imperfect is at play here. Also, fun fact, I chose this pattern which is one of the classic Japanese styles. It was originally made to represent the waves on the Sea of Japan, but is now more famously known as the wifi symbol. Every time we passed this tiny sashimi restaurant, there was a queue. One day we joined the line and had delicious sashimi in this 7 seat restaurant with two chefs.

We availed of one of the free Japan guides via the tourist agency and visited Meiji Jingu Shrine with her as well as Shibuya crossing. There’s about 70 ha of garden surrounding the shrine and later we would see the garden from the 45th floor observation deck of TMGB. She also helped us to navigate Shinjuku Station which worked well the one time we were with her. Later, not so much. Shinjuku Station is the busiest in Japan with a daily passenger throughput of 2.7M it was also undergoing renovations when we were there. Guide lady left us at Shibuya where we had a yummy lunch at a hole in the wall. There was a wedding ceremony soon to happen at Meiji Shingu, yes ordinary people can apply to hold their matrimonials there. These sake barrels are donated to make merit I think. These were the first of many gyoza. This looks like more chicken stir fry. There was a short queue to get into this place, so we didn’t feel we could linger.