7 hours ago, liuzhou said:
I'm not sure why you find Asian use of tomatoes so strange. They are widely used.
China and Japan not so much maybe as say, southern Asia, but they are used. The one dish every Chinese student can make is scrambled egg with tomato. See here. In fact, China grows more tomatoes than the rest of the world put together.
And we don't eat everything with rice!
That said a recipe for any dish won't necessarily mention the accompanying rice. I might give you a recipe for chicken with mushrooms and take it as a given that you will eat it with rice. No need to mention it. Just the same as me giving you my method for grilling a steak but not mentioning the potatoes I expect you will eat with it.
The picture of the cabbage rolls showed it served in a bowl with the thin sauce. I opted to serve it with rice on the same plate because I thought my Korean son would like it that way. When I said 'no rice' I meant that rice is usually included in stuffed cabbage filling, rather than on the side. Perhaps I should have said 'unusual' instead of 'strange'. I have several Japanese and Korean cookbooks and I can't recall the use of tomatoes in any of them. I have seen tomatoes in a few Chinese recipes though. At the time, It seemed to me that I have started seeing a few Japanese recipes (from Japanese cooks who live in Japan) which I thought showed Western influences. My son was not surprised at all. He is of the opinion that Japanese food is quite widely influenced by other cultures.
