July 15th, 2008
It is hot here right now. Very hot and humid. I spent all day dreaming about cold somen noodles and here they are. A bed of cold noodles with some heavily gingered pork (pork fillets, a grated knob of ginger, a couple of spoons of sake, a spoon of mirin and a spoon of soy) all served up with salad steamed buk choy and beer.
My friend Jon was staying over on his way to America so technically this wasn’t cooking for one, except that both our wives were absent so it was sort of bachelor food anyway.
By Tom -- 0 comments
July 14th, 2008
It has only been a week or so but I find myself a bachelor again while my wife is in India. The deal I made with her was that she could go as long as she brought back some pictures of Indian dishes for me to post here. We’ll see how she goes.
Anyhow, I am cooking for one again and so here goes a string of very quick and easy dishes. Ten minutes max that will keep me well fed and healthy without a lot of effort.
This one is loosely called octopus salad.
In the middle, unseen, is a big cake of my favourite tofu (round and tough) surrounded by cold soba noodles. On top are some salad vegetables and sliced octopus legs (bought pre-boiled and ready to eat cold). I drizzled some Kewpie thousand island dressing on top and finished it all off with a suika bar ice block. These ice blocks are exceptional and not just because they look so cool. They actually taste a little bit like real watermelon (only sweeter) and the seeds are actually little lumps of chocolate. Very cold and very nice in a hot humid summer.
By Tom -- 0 comments
July 12th, 2008
Japan has been known as the land of the umbrella, the land of miniaturisation and the land of overwork but really we all know it is the land of the pudding. Not that Japan has the patent on too many pudding designs, most of them are imported from other countries. It is just that Japan has taken so strongly to them and changed them into a visual art in a way that never ceases to amaze me.
These two came from near Ueno station in a massive department store basement food hall. One is mango and tapioca and the other is a kind of chocolate nutty creamy thing. And yes they did look better before they were transported home to my place but that is not the shop’s fault as you can see from the packaging
By Tom -- 0 comments
July 11th, 2008
Japanese food companies do their best to make it easy to open anything. There is always a way to tear or open a package that often seems kind of over-engineered. Off the shelf onigiri (rice balls) are the perfect example.
If you walk into any convenience store you will see a shelf in the fridge full of varieties of triangular rice balls wrapped in nori and then wrapped in plastic. If the nori touches the rice for any length of time it goes all soft and looses a bit of its appeal. So the plastic first wraps the rice, then the nori wraps the plastic and then the plastic wraps the nori.
In order to open these little parcels they packaging is printed with a “1″, “2″, and “3″ telling you which to deal with first.
Step one tear down the strip labeled”1″ until the package is separated into two halves.
Step two wiggle and jiggle “2″ corner plastic gently off of one half taking it away from under as well as over the nori. (this takes finesse or it doesn’t look too good when you finish.
Step 3 do the same with the other corner marked “3″
tuck the nori back in again and hook in.
Alternatively, just ignore the numbers and rip open the package which ever way you can then pick up the pieces of torn nori and dropped rice and learn the hard way why sometimes it is good to follow the rules.
By Tom -- 0 comments
July 10th, 2008
Shaped like half a lemon but with an extremely light and airy texture, these almond cakes are one of those things that you either love or get extremely bored by. There is very little almond flavour there and in fact not a lot of flavour at all. It is simply a very light cake that leaves me wondering “Why bother”. In my opinion it is not one of those so-subtle-it-is-sublime sort of things. It is more like so-subtle-it-bores-me-to-tears.
By Tom -- 0 comments
July 9th, 2008
We always make rice paper rolls with whatever is available, as I’m sure you do. These ones include yakisoba noodles, rice, salad vegetables, beef with sesame, mint, sesame sauce and a little shiso sauce.
What do you put in your rice paper rolls?
By Tom -- 0 comments
July 8th, 2008
There is something strange going on here. There are no leaf vegetables in the dish. Instead there is piman (capsicum). It was on the table in no time flat. And the strangest bit of all was that my wife cooked this for us. Stranger than fiction!
By Tom -- 1 comment
July 7th, 2008
You’ve probably seen photos of cube watermelon from Japan before. Trust me they are an oddity here too. But their round ones are so round. And they come in these string bags that make them look so much like a soccer (football) that it takes my mind to the world cup and I wonder if Japan can make it this time?
I’ll ponder this some more as I eat this delicious suika (watermelon)
By Tom -- 1 comment
July 5th, 2008
Rice, wakame salad, sashimi, tempura, sushi, calamari salad and Japanese beer.
I’m glad to say that the dinner was better than the movie we saw. And the best news yet was that there were left overs for lunch the next day.
By Tom -- 0 comments
July 4th, 2008
Most furikake is long life dried stuff that you drop on top of plain rice to make it more exciting but this is the really nice stuff. It is made up of all sorts of weird ingredients like dries and shaved calamari, seaweed, spices and all sorts of other unidentifiable things. The bad news is that it lasts just a week in the fridge. The good news is that it is usually gone long before then.
By Tom -- 1 comment
Recent Comments