Dairy Products in Japanese Cuisine

[Kuma]

My favourite snack after work (about 10 years ago) used to be:

Wasabi and Condensed Milk on Toast.

[Salli Vates]

One of my Japanese cookbooks has a recipe for tofu "steak" with shimeji mushrooms and a sauce made from cream, white wine and butter. It was actually pretty good.

But the thought of milk and miso is not an appealing one!

[Hiroyuki]

But the thought of milk and miso is not an appealing one!

←

I used to think so, but I find this milk miso soup and milk miso sauce quite appealing, and I even saw milk miso ramen and milk curry miso ramen!

[_john]

my dairy product mashups include:

cheese yakimeshi

a pat of butter on toasted mochi with nori and soy sauce

cheese tempura

cheese mochi okonomiyaki

garlic paprika shiitake stir fried in butter

I'm sure there are more. I use clarified butter (ghee) as my usual cooking oil most of the time so butter makes it's appearance in many otherwise "traditional" dishes.

I don’t make it at home but I really like butter ramen as well.

The only place I have been able to find cheese that I consider edible is in foreign food shops. I haven’t had anything from a supermarket that I particularly enjoyed.

[torakris]

You will never have to worry about washing extra spoons again!

Sour cream in a tube.

[JasonWV]

Hello everyone I was jus wondering is here any kind of Native cheeses in Japan and or China? thanks

[SheenaGreena]

Hello everyone I was jus wondering is here any kind of Native cheeses in Japan and or China? thanks

I think the closest thing you are going to get to native cheese in that area is perhaps cheese or butter made from mare's milk in Mongolia. Tibetans also use butter and I believe milk from yak's, but I don't know if they make cheese.

Milk is drunk in both Japan and Korea and I know for a fact that there are no native cheeses in korea, don't know about japan but I'm sure it's the same for them as well. If either country eats cheese, its going to be imported from the west or "borrowed" from the west.

By the way, all of this is just coming from general knowlege meaning I didn't do any research. So if I'm wrong or if anyone would like to add something please do!

[helenjp]

Cheese...no. Apparently dairy products appeared in Japan in the Nara period (I think) as health food for the super-rich. I don't recall any mention of cheese or even butter though it's a little hard to imagine that the concept of drinking/eat milk arrived in Japan without any knowledge of fermentation etc to preserve milk arriving with it.

[Hiroyuki]

The ancient cheese-like product, so (蘇 in Kanji), in the Asuka Period was made by simmering milk.

This webpage says that 38 kg of milk is simmered for seven to eight hours to make about 4 kg of so.

[helenjp]

Thanks for that! I knew the milk was boiled down, but hadn't ever seen pictures, and had no idea it was cooked for so long. Now I understand why it wasn't fermented - before I saw the pix, I'd always imagined something more like a normal fresh curd product.

[v. gautam]

What you have is milk fudge, called khoyA in northern India, mAwA in western India, and a sight to delight any Indian heart! It is no exaggeration to claim that this stuff keeps India happy and functional; take it away, and within days, the country will have turned into a wasteland! Not kidding!

It is used in savory dishes, especially Awadhi Muslim cooking [from Lucknow], but its main use is in a range of long-keeping sweets, often flavored with saffron, almonds, cardamom etc.

Wonder if its appearance early in Japan's history carries with it the faint residue of Buddhism's cultural antecedents, Bodhidharma et al. ?

gautam

Edited October 23, 2006 by v. gautam (log)

[helenjp]

Wonder if...

Almost certainly - it appears in Japan at the same time, and in the same locations/social milieu as Buddhism.