Yaki soba

Yakisoba is Japanese fried noodles. However, it doesn't actually use soba noodles (buckwheat). Yakisoba uses, well, Yakisoba noodles. My husband prepared this dish, seeing as he is going to be doing a lot more cooking in the coming months. I guess he is practicing for those days when I am utterly unable to go near food, for reasons I am not quite ready to share. In Japan, Yakisoba is kind of 'fast food' but if you break it down, it is quite healthly. Lean pork is used, as well as cabbage, carrots and bean sprouts. The sauce is either Bulldog brand or a generic yakisoba sauce that comes bottled. The garnishes are powdered seaweed and pickled ginger. It is absolutely delicious! To make things easy, you can purchase yakisoba kits at asian grocery stores. It comes with both the noodles and sauce (sometimes in powdered form). Very easy! ^_^

Wafuu Pasta

The Japanese often take Western dishes and make them their own. This type of cooking is known as 'Wafuu'. Examples of wafuu include Curry Raisu, Hayashi Raisu, Omu-raisu and Hamburger Steak among others. One of the most popular types of wafuu though, is Japanese style spaghetti. Ingredients most westerners would never even dream of adding to pasta become gourmet fair in Japan. For instance, a very popular spaghetti dish mixes spicy pickled cod roe and mayonnaise. Called 'mentaiko' is is my husband's favourite spaghetti dish and it is actually delicious. Some of the more daring recipes for spaghetti use squid's ink, resulting in, you guessed it, black spaghetti.

My above pictured dish was not quite so daring as squid's ink. I have mixed chicken thigh, shimeji mushrooms, shiitake, and green onions with spaghetti. It is garnished with sesame seeds and nori. The base flavour is 'mentsuyu' which is a soup mix for soba noodles. I added just a touch of mentsuyu because the flavours of the mushrooms and chicken are the real stars of this dish. The result was something wonderful that I hadn't tasted since I ate a Saizeriya restaurant in Japan. Oishi! ^_^

Pork three ways

Nimono in Japanese simply means 'simmered dish'. It is a very popular and flavourful method of cooking, where ingredients are simmered in a small amount of broth with various seasonings. Throughout the course of cooking, the broth is reduced to almost nothing and the ingredients absorb the flavour. Often a drop lid is used to preserve the umami (deliciousness).

Pictured above is pork simmered with tofu, shiitake mushrooms, garlic and onions. The broth is a standard Japanese flavour combination of dashi, sugar, mirin, sake and soy sauce. The tofu is on the bottom so you can't really see it... The orange powder on top is called 'shichimi togarashi' or seven flavour chili pepper. It is a very popular condiment in Japan. Obviously it contains seven different ingredients, the main one being ground chili pepper. Added to this is usually mandarin orange peel, black sesame, poppy seed, hemp seed, nori and sansho (another type of pepper). Other recipes may use yuzu peel, rapeseed, shiso and ginger. It is quite powerful and only a little is needed for flavour.

This dish is pork simmered with ume boshi (pickled plum), ginger, garlic, onion and carrot. The broth is the standard Japanese mix, but added to this is rice vinegar and of course the ume boshi. The pink pickled plum gives the pork a distinct pink hue. It also preserves the meat and makes it perfect for leftover lunches. This recipe was originally intended for fish nimono, but it works just as well with pork or chicken.

Here we have pork stir fry with enoki mushrooms, carrot and green onion. It has been lightly flavoured with shiso ponzu sauce. The enoki mushrooms stay rather crisp and chewy, making for an interesting texture. If you can find some, I highly recommend trying them in soup or a stir fry. If you enjoy nabe hot pot, enoki goes well in there too.

Shimeji Mushroom and Chicken Rice

A really easy one-pot meal in Japan is mixed rice. That is, rice cooked with seasonings and other (usually seasonal) ingredients. For example, chestnut mixed rice is popular in the autumn because chestnuts are most plentiful during that time. The mixed rice version I made, contains primarily shimeji mushrooms and chicken thigh. There is however, a bit of carrot and fried tofu in there as well. The garnishes are sesame seeds and nori seaweed. Mixed rice can be made with any type of meat or fish, as well as any type of mushroom and almost any type of vegetable. The only seasonings I used were black pepper, a dash of soy sauce, a dash of mirin and a pinch of sugar. The ingredients are really the main flavours.

First I washed the rice (1 cup) and set it soaking in water with the seasonings. In a pan I fried the chicken (cut into tiny pieces, two thighs), the mushrooms (one packet), carrot (1) and deep fried tofu (just two squares). I tossed on some pepper and just a slight dash of soy sauce. When it was fully cooked, I placed it on top of my rice in the rice cooker. Then... ON. That's it! So simple! When the cooker is finished, the rice and ingredients simply need to be gently mixed.

There was a delightful restaurant in Niigata that my husband and I often went to which served only mixed rice. I brought my parents and brothers there for supper one evening when they came to visit. There were so many different kinds of mixed rice, plus the seasonal specialities. One of my favourites was the chestnut and mushroom rice. Fantastic! If you were feeling wealthy, you could order the matsutake mushroom rice. Matsutake mushrooms are highly prized and super expensive, but quite possibly the most delicious mushrooms on the planet! A soup made of matsutake mushrooms is likely what they serve in heaven. ^_^

Variations on chicken...and some beef

On the lighter side of cooking, we have here a chicken salad with sesame dressing. For those of you who questioned the merits of my deep frying, this is for you ~_^. The chicken is simply poached in water and then sliced. The vegetables can be whatever pleases you or you have on hand. The dressing is a little something my husband whipped up. It contains, among other things, ground up sesame seeds, peanut butter, soy sauce, sugar and miso. It is actually a protein laden dressing that tastes very fresh. I do think it is necessary to use natural peanut butter which contains nothing but peanuts (no sugar, salt, etc). You will be glad you did.

This little dish is lemon chicken. It goes well on a bed of onions and red peppers, but since I did not have either of those on hand, broccoli became the partner. The chicken breasts are lightly dusted with flour and then seared until brown. They are then simmered in chicken broth and lemon juice with dash of salt and pepper. Cornstarch is used to thicken it up near the end of the cooking time. I threw in a bit of garlic as well. If you have fresh lemons on hand, I recommend added some of the zest to the sauce.

I have posted gyudon before, but here it is again--the delightful beef bowl. Who can resist the strips of beef and sliced onion cooked in a salty sweet broth? It is always a treat! The side dish shown above is a spur of the moment thing. It consists of sliced berry tomatoes with pepper cheese. It was melted with a mini kitchen torch.

Now for the record, it is not what you eat, it is how much. I am of the opinion that you can eat any type of food you want....in moderation. Portion size has been ballooned into proportions unheard of in other parts of the world. For instance in Japan, fried food is eaten (ie tempura) but it is not eaten everyday and only one or two pieces at a time. The most tempura I have ever seen served to one person in Japan was four. The vast majority of Japanese people are thin. This I think comes from portion sizes and daily exercise...not in the form a of gym, but rather from everyday walking and biking. They walk A LOT. Goodness knows, A LOT. And did you know that Japanese women love love love their sweets? Cakes, mochi, cookies, you name it! But again, portion size! They don't typically buy entire cakes, but rather, one piece. One piece of cake! Something to think about, isn't it? ^_^

Mini Tonkatsu

Tonkatsu is basically a deep fried pork cutlet. It is very popular in Japan and has a myriad of variations. For example, you could slice it horizontally and place a slice of cheese in the middle before breading it or stuff it with ume boshi and shiso. The tonkatsu we made tonight is just the basic version, which features pork coated in panko (Japanese bread crumbs). Normally you would fry the entire cutlet as a whole, but we sliced our pork thin to make bite-sized pieces instead. My husband wanted to use the leftovers in his bento and smaller pieces work best for that.

The pork is first dipped in flour, then egg, then panko. We deep fried it for about 6 minutes, before letting it drain on a paper towel. Actually, we made three batches of tonkatsu and froze it for quick lunches. It reheats easily in a toaster oven. In Japan, tonkatsu is often served with mounds of shredded cabbage and cherry tomatoes. The freshness of the vegetables offsets the oil. Condiments such as Bulldog sauce and mustard are a must, though occasionally tonkatsu is served alongside rice with curry drizzled on top. A delicious donburi can also be made using tonkatsu and egg.

This side dish is green beans with sesame dressing. It is extraordinarily delicious and quite healthy as well. The dressing is made by grinding sesame seeds in a mortar (or with a food processor) until they form a paste rather like peanut butter. Then, a tiny amount of sugar and soy sauce is added, as well as a dash of sesame oil. This is then mixed with blanched or steamed green beens. So delicious! Try it with spinach, asparagus or broccoli too!

P.S. We got a deep fryer for Christmas. ^_^

Simple Chicken Drumsticks

Cooking needn't always involve scores of fancy ingredients to be delicious. Here is a simple chicken drumstick supper, served on a bed of sauted vegetables. The chicken was pan seared in a bit of canola oil and butter (just a dab!). The seasoning is a standard chicken mix that you can purchase in large plastic containers at any supermarket. When the chicken was browned, I added a tiny amount of water for it to simmer in. Cooking wine is another option for simmering, but water works just as well. I am trying to limit the amount of cooking wine I consume right now, though I am certain the alcohol burns off when it cooks. Still, one cannot help but worry a bit. For anyone who knows me, you know why. The vegetables were sauted in a dab of butter, with a pinch of salt. That's it! For vegetables you really can use anything that is lingering in your refrigerator. I used shiitake mushrooms, green bell peppers, garlic, onion, carrot and a little hakusai cabbage (suey choy). This meal was served with rice, miso soup and a small fresh salad (small because there are a lot of vegetables in the meal already).

Sukiyaki!

Sukiyaki is, to put it simply, beef seasoned with sweet and salty sauce. Often other ingredients are added to increase the enjoyment of the meal.  Sukiyaki is cooked hot pot style, usually at the dinner table. We used an electric hotplate, as we do not have a portable gas one (which is preferable). An iron skillet with handles is utilized instead of a nabe cooking pot (a nabe pot is what comes to mind when one thinks of this cooking style). You can buy special sukiyaki pots but a nice deep skillet will work too. Non-stick is fine. The beef, vegetables and simmering sauce are prepared beforehand and placed on the dinner table for diners to add to the pot. You can see that I used shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, carrot, leek, hakusai (suey choy) and konnyaku (a calorie-free jelly made of yam that absorbs whatever flavour you place it in). Other ingredients I would have liked to include are tofu both fresh and deep fried, shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves) and shimeji mushrooms. My husband desperately wanted to raw egg to dip the cooked meat and vegetables into but the chance of food poisoning is too much. In Japan when sukiyaki is eaten, everyone is given a bowl with a fresh raw egg. When you take something from the pot to eat, you dip it in the beaten egg first. I never did this but my husband insists it is the best way to eat sukiyaki. Oddly enough no one gets food poisoning from raw egg in Japan... The simmering sauce is made from soy sauce, mirin, sake, water and sugar.

Forgive the blurriness of the photo! This is my husband oiling the pan with a bit of beef fat. Now I know that sounds really unhealthy, but it is just a little bit and it gives the sukiyaki a full bodied flavour, so be sure to use some!

Here you can see the beef is lightly fried. A tiny amount of sugar is sprinkled on top of the beef as it fries.

Eventually you add the simmering sauce and then start placing other ingredients on top. Here you can see the hakusai. Once everything is added, you put the lid on and let it simmer until desired doneness. It is really delicious and fun to cook! Sometimes if there is leftover sauce you can add some pre-cooked udon noodles. Steamed rice suits this meal perfectly!

And for dessert...shortbread!

Hamburger Steak/Salisbury Steak

In Japan a 'hamburg' (hamburger) is actually what we would call Salisbury Steak. It is an oval shaped ground meat patty complimented with a gravy or sauce. Granted they do have hamburgers in Japan--at fast food outlets such as McDonalds, as well as their own domestic joint 'Mos Burger' (which I must say is the gourmet of fast food hamburgers!). However, there are entire restaurants dedicated to serving hamburg in all its meaty glory. There are variations on flavour, but the basic idea is to mix ground beef with ground pork, bread crumbs and egg. I like to use onions and garlic in my hamburg. A bit of ketchup and Bulldog sauce goes well in it too. I like to experiment with the seasonings--sometimes spicy, sometimes savory.  Ketchup is always welcome as a condiment for hamburg, but a popular sauce is a mixture of red wine, Bulldog and a small touch of ketchup. For this photo I just made a  brown sauce. Steamed vegetables such as carrot and broccoli are often served with hamburg to contrast any oily flavour. It is a far cry from tv dinner salisbury steak!

We have a variety of meat again!

Having gone to Costco last weekend, our freezer is now absolutely full of a variety of meal--drumsticks, chicken thighs, pork, beef, salmon, ground meat and shrimp. I now have some choice again about what to cook. Tonight we had lemon asparagus chicken drumsticks. The lemon lightens the flavour and so though the meal is hearty, it is not heavy. Lemon pepper further enhances the flavour.

This is of course Gyudon or beef bowl which I posted earlier. Really the meat should be cut much thinner, but even with partially freezing the meat, I can't seem to get a thin enough slice. Ah well, it was still delicious! Some supermarkets will slice the meat thin for you, but often they require you to give them a day's notice.

And finally we have banana chip muffins. Though the recipe calls for three bananas, I found that two worked much better. The dough had moisture, but was not gummy. I substituted half the white flour for whole wheat and used Splenda instead of sugar. The chocolate was real though. ^_^

Japanese Gratin

Macaroni Gratin made Japanese-style was my husband's favourite food in elementary school. His school served all the students lunches and often Macaroni Gratin was one of the features. How is Japanese Gratin different from our Macaroni and Cheese? Well, for one thing, there is far less cheese. Secondly, there is less macaroni. A true Japanese Gratin uses ample white sauce and only a sprinkle of cheese on top. The bread crumb topping is made of Panko, which is what tempura is coated in. The ingredients within the gratin are mostly vegetables and protein (usually shimp or chicken).

The gratin I made above uses shrimp, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, onion and garlic. There is of course macaroni in there too, but much less than macaroni and cheese. The white sauce is simply 3 tbsp margarine, 4 tbsp flour and 2.5 cups milk. The top is seared using a kitchen torch. It does look a bit black, but tastes amazing! I highly recommend making this dish--you may never go back to regular mac and cheese!

Last of the autumn bounty

The days are definately shorter and colder. It seems that autumn is fading out and winter is rolling in. Last weekend I received a box of apples, the last gasp of fall's bounty. Well, not quite, but it sounds dramatic, doesn't it? ^_^ I did, however, receive a box of slightly over-ripe apples. They were a bit soft for eating directly, but perfect fodder for applesauce! I made this sauce with very little sweetener and no spices. I plan on using it for baking and cooking things such as loaves and curry. After cooking it, I put it in the longest baking pan I had to cool it down faster. When it was cool, I divided it up into containers for freezing. My freezer is fairly bursting with pumpkin, zucchini and now, applesauce! By the way, you may notice I left the skins on the apples. Firstly I believe the skins, when washed, are very healthy for your digestive system. Secondly and most importantly, I am too lazy to peel that many apples. ^_^

Today's bento for hubby consisted of grilled salmon, rolled omelet, sesame pickled cucumber, berry tomato and mixed vegetables.

The day before yesterday's bento was a fried pork cutlet on rice with carrots. It is hard to see the rice in this photo, but it is there peeking out the side!

Last weekend my husband prepared ramen, making his own special spicy miso broth. We were lucky to get some Eringi (King Oyster Mushrooms) on Saturday, so we made great use of them. Some of the mushrooms went into this soup and were delicious! We don't get them often, so when we do, it is a great treat!

I made another pumpkin loaf last week. I know I posted one already, but this is a shot of the inside. When using fresh pumpkin you tend to get chunks rather than the smooth consistancy that comes in a can. Both have their time and place, but sometimes it is nice to actually feel like you are eating pumpkin. This loaf highlights that, I think.

Last week's meals

In a previous post I demonstrated how the Japanese make curry rice using blocks of curry roux. There is another recipe for curry in Japan called 'dry curry,' I suppose refering to the fact that no roux or liquid is used. Packets designed especially for dry curry abound in Japan, but you can get the same results using plain curry powder and a bit of salt. The best meat for dry curry is ground meat, as it contains enough flavourful fat to prevent the dry curry from becoming, well, too dry. Other ingredients such as onions and garlic are excellent additions. You can be a bit creative with dry curry, adding whatever types of vegetables you prefer. In this instance I used canned corn for an element of sweetness. If you like, dry curry can be made into fried rice or served on top of plain white rice in the donburi style.

Salted salmon has many uses, from bento to onigiri (rice ball) filling. Over the weekend, I made an easy lunch of salmon mixed rice using two fillets of salted salmon. First I prepared the rice by washing and rinsing it. Then I placed the raw fillets on top of the rice with just a dollop of margarine and turned on the rice cooker. The fillets steamed along with the rice. After about 40 minutes I gently broke up the fillets with the rice paddle and mixed it into the steaming rice. I added a touch of sesame seeds for a bit of crunch. So easy and so satisfying! I really think that no kitchen should be without a good quality rice cooker. Of course you could use a saucepan but it is slightly more challenging to get the rice just right.

We do have A LOT of ground meat in our freezer, so here is yet another ground meat meal. This is stroganoff and once again it is an easy one. I simply browned the ground meat with onion and garlic. I then added a touch of sake and water, before adding a can of Campbells Cream of Mushroom Soup. When it was nearly done I stirred in some sour cream and it was complete! This recipe can be found on the Campbells Kitchen website. Just search 'Stroganoff'. I do encourage people to check out that site for a lot of easy economical recipes.

And to finish off, a whole wheat honey banana muffin! I am trying to eat really healthy right now for certain reasons ^_^ so I figured this slightly sweet muffin would help with that. There is no added refined sugar in it at all, only natural honey. It is more of a breakfast muffin than a sweet and helps when you don't feel like eating much in the morning. Plus, it is just right when you are craving something a bit sweet but not cloyingly so.

That's it for now! ~_^

For the love of bread

I made a rather large batch of bread dough the other day. Half of it I used to make regular buns but the other half became a large loaf of fluffy bread. It really is delicious! The only problem is the slicing...I seem to have inherited my mom's technique for slicing bread--which results in the top being thick and the bottom being thin. ^_^; Ah well, you can't win 'em all! Either way, the bread is great as-is, or lightly toasted. Like the edge of the bottle in the upper right of the background? It is cooking sake for those who were wondering. ^_^

And what suits bread more than chili? This batch of chili was made using a combination of ground beef and ground pork. There is a can of soybeans in there, as well as corn, carrots, onion and garlic--lots of garlic! A touch of Tabasco adds some heat, as does the spicy pepper cheese. I served the chili on top of fresh lettuce for a little crunch and to tame the heat. It's actually not that spicy though. The chili powder I have seems to be a bit on the mild side. In any case, it is a satisfying dish when the weather outside is frosty.

A new favourite loaf

An unexpected visit from my parents on Halloween yielded delicious results! They appeared at our door bearing a very seasonally appropriate gift--a pumpkin! And what a pumpkin it was! Huge! I let it sit on my kitchen counter for a day so I could bask in its glory for awhile, knowing full well I wouldn't see another like it for a whole year. Then yesterday, I finally worked up the mettle to break it down into pieces. I peeled and chopped it up for freezing, as it is a baking and cooking staple. Normally you should cook the pieces before freezing, but I couldn't be bothered (it was quite enough to chop it up!). I reserved a few pieces to make a new recipe, Pumpkin Loaf. I don't want to call it a bread, because that implies yeast and this is a quickbread. However, it acts very much like a bread and can be used as such. Let me say, delicious! I used a mixture of white and whole wheat flour to give it more of a nutitional punch and lessen my guilt for indulging. It has quickly become my favourite loaf! So moist and delicious, I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and snack! Bonus: pumpkin is good for you! So ha!

Here is a bento lunch I made for my husband yesterday. On the left you can see some salted salmon which I pan fried. The upper right is just some sliced cucumbers and below it is a tamago-yaki (rolled sweet omelet). Rice is of course standard. We made the salted salmon ourselves. It is super easy! We bought a huge piece of salmon from Costco and sprinkled both sides of the fillet with pickling salt (any salt would work just as well). We then let it sit in the fridge for an hour. Then we sliced it into individual servings and froze it for quick lunches. Salted salmon is also nice broken into flakes and mixed with steamed rice.

This is actually one of my husband's favourite dishes: ginger pork. Though it is not swimming in sauce, the flavour is very much there. The meat is sauted until the sauce soaks in and evaporates away. The result is tender, ginger infused pork with a hint of something sweet and salty. I served it on a bed of cabbage steamed with butter, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper.

Definately making pumpkin loaf again!