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. ^_^

Onigiri (Rice Ball)

These are the onigiri (rice balls) I made for my husband today. They are very easy to carry and are perfect for road trips. My husband had to travel to another city today to make some deliveries with his job and he requested onigiri instead of his regular bento, as he needed to eat in the truck. Onigiri is a shaped ball of rice with some sort of filling inside. Typical fillings include but are not limited to salted salmon, roe mixed with mayonnaise, ume boshi, tuna with mayonnaise, mentaiko, dried bonito flakes and pickled seaweed. You can get creative with this and try things like sausage and other types of pickles. Even canned chicken or ham would work. The point is to use something salted as it needs to last in your lunch. Onigiri is sort of like the Japanese answer to sandwiches. We use items like ham and pickles in our sandwiches because they don't go bad as quickly. It is a similar story in Japan--things like salted salmon and ume boshi work just like deli meat here. I shaped the rice with a small piece of salmon inside it. I then wrapped a piece of nori seaweed around it. Once the rice ball was cool, I packaged it up in tin foil and presto! A very portable lunch! Onigiri makes a satisfying lunch or snack anytime and it is quite healthy for you as well. Onigiri works best with Japanese koshihikari short grain rice (sometimes called sushi rice in the supermarket).

Supper tonight was another donburi. This is a pork cutlet on rice with egg and onion. Onions and garlic are simmered in sake, soy sauce, dashi and sugar. Then a sliced cooked pork cutlet is layered on top. Beaten egg is drizzled on top and simmered until cooked. This is placed on top of steamed white rice. Pickled ginger goes well with this dish. It is satisfying at the end of a long day of physical work (my poor man!).

Tomorrow is Friday and I am thinking spaghetti!

The delightful world of Omu-raisu

The dish you see here is in fact Japanese. It is called Omu-raisu (Omelet Rice). It is basically ketchup fried rice, covered with a thin omelet. Sometimes the Japanese top it with a demi-glace sauce but we usually just use more ketchup. In this case, I sprinkled and melted hot pepper havarti cheese (we also used ketchup afterwards). Mixed with the rice is a bit of onion, garlic, mixed frozen veg and cubed ham. In Japan they often add mushrooms to it. In fact, in Japan they have ENTIRE restaurants dedicated to this single item and all its variations. They keep the egg much more runny, but I prefer to cook it solid. It is really delicious when you taste it in its authentic environment. If ever you find yourself hungry in Japan, try Omu-raisu!

In addition to the omu-raisu, I made potato leek soup. First I boiled a couple of my mom's garden potatoes. I mashed them until they were super smooth. Then I made a roux using one tablespoon of margarine and one tablespoon of flour. I added about 1/2 cup milk and 1 cup chicken stock (I saved some simmering broth from last night which had chicken, soy sauce, sake, mirin and brown sugar). Once this mixture started to thicken, I added the mashed potatoes and a bit of chopped leek. I didn't need to add any extra seasoning, as the leftover chicken broth was very flavourful, if not a bit dark from the soy sauce. In any case, the soup was soothingly smooth, slightly sweet and very delicious. The moral is always save your chicken stock!

On a side note, I made bread today, but you have seen that before. Tomorrow I may tackle pie crust for a raspberry pie I am planning for Thanksgiving.

Hot Pot for a cold day!

Well, last night (and all day today) we had our first snowfall of the season. Mind you, it is all melted now, but it was coming down fairly heavily last night and today. When my husband came home from work (yes, he worked Saturday) he declared how cold it was outside. You can imagine he was very pleased to find hot pot simmering on the stove. This hot pot is served in individual nabe bowls and you eat directly from the pot it was cooked in (saves on dishes!). Basically it is a thick chicken rice stew/soup with egg on top. Using leftover chicken, I prepared a broth and added some vegetables. Then I added rice before pouring egg on top. It warms you right to the core!

One of our side dishes was potato cakes. I boiled some potato, onion and sausage together in a pot. After draining, I mashed them together, added a bit of egg, shaped them into patties, coated in bread crumbs and fried. They were nice served with a bit of ketchup.

What is this strange looking blob, you may ask? Though it doesn't look like much, it is actually a nutritional powerhouse, all the while being delicious. This is a ham and cabbage casserole. It combines shredded cabbage, onions, garlic and ham, in a thick creamy saucy. The sauce is very very basic: milk and minute tapioca! First you shred and boil the cabbage...drain. Then you fry the onion, garlic and ham in soft margarine. Remove the ham mixture and add milk and minute tapioca to the same pan. Once that is thick, add the ham mixture and cabbage. Let it boil for a bit and then pour it into a greased casserole dish. Mix a small amount of bread crumbs with margarine and sprinkle on the top. I should say that black pepper can be added to taste. Salt is not necessary considering the ham. I baked it in the oven for about 40 minutes. It was really great! Nothing to look at, but quite good. It tastes richer than it really is. The tapioca is deceptive in that it mimics cream without the calories. I guess you could say it was comfort food for a cold day!

There you have it! Cold weather fare!

A little taste of autumn!

When October comes around, chestnuts start appearing in our local Asian grocery store. Chestnuts are very much an autumn food, though if preserved correctly, you can enjoy them all year round. Last week, my husband brought home a bag of chestnuts in their shell. I was very excited, because I just love the subtle sweetness of them. Chestnuts, when cooked, have a rather soft texture, sort of like a potato. They can be mashed or even made into flour. In fact, I had chestnut ice cream at a restaurant in Vancouver. It was great! Anyway, I let the chestnuts sit in boiled water for about 20 minutes to soften their shell. Then I spent about an hour cutting away both the outer and inner layers...the most annoying part. Once that was done I boiled the chestnuts again until they were soft. I froze them on a baking sheet before pouring them into a plastic container. Because they had been individually frozen, I can take out just what I need at anytime. So tonight I made chestnut mixed rice. The chestnuts are placed in the rice cooker along with the rice, water, sake, mirin, soy sauce and sugar. Other nice additions (that I didn't have on hand) are mushrooms (shiitake or shimeji) and abura-age (fried tofu).

A real treat tonight! Last weekend my dad had given us some bone-in chicken breasts. We rarely buy white chicken breasts because they are insanely expensive. So this was great! I roasted them with fresh garden onion, garlic and grated ginger, along with a sauce of honey, sesame oil and soy sauce. It was very delicious and provided ample leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

This Japanese side dish is known as Kinpira, though it really should contain burdock (gobo) in addition to the carrot. But, seeing as burdock is scarce in my kitchen, it was made entirely of carrots. The carrots are lightly fried before adding sugar, soy sauce, mirin and sake (I have already said these are the magical Japanese flavouring ingredients). Sesame seeds are the highlight of the dish. As a side note, it freezes well, makes an excellent bento addition and can be eaten hot, cold or room temperature.

With the cooler weather coming, cooking is much more pleasant!

A very hot day!

Today was a record setting day for temperature! The mercury soared above 30 degrees and it was certainly much more than that inside our apartment! Nevertheless, I cooked...and I cooked a lot today!

The above pictured dish is Japanese teriyaki chicken. The drumsticks are simmered in a mixture of water, brown sugar, sake, soy sauce and mirin. Sliced ginger, garlic, onion and carrot make nice additons. If there had been room in the pan, I would have added some konnyaku, but that will be saved for another time. Did you know that in Japan you cannot buy bottled teriyaki sauce? My husband had never heard of such a thing! Teriyaki flavour there is always achieved by the magic ingredients sake, mirin, soy sauce and sugar.

This nimono bean dish utilizes dried soy beans. Cooking beans is a large task to be sure, especially soy beans which take MUCH longer to cook than other types of dried beans. I soaked these overnight and started cooking them at 10:00am. They finished around 4:00pm. This is a task for a day at home. Added to the beans was Splenda, brown sugar, soy sauce and honey. The honey gives it a distinctive taste and lovely glaze. Soybeans are an awesome source of protein and keep very well in the freezer. Also, they are a perfect addition to any bento lunch and can be eaten hot or cold.

Yes, the black stuff is the forbidden seaweed hijiki. I had frozen the leftovers from last day and took them out again to make mixed rice. I stuffed some "abura-age" tofu pouches with this mixed rice. Delish! Technically rice eaten in an abura-age pouch is classified as sushi. Abura-age is thin pouches of deep fried tofu which has been simmered in vinegar and sugar. They are sweet, salty and tangy.

I ran out of pouches and just served the remaining rice as-is. When I lived in Japan, there was a noodle house which served hijiki rice as a side dish with their soba noodles. I have never tasted such wonderful hijiki rice in my life! They make, hands down, the BEST hijiki rice ever! Of course the restaurant was a little noisy being underneath a railway track...

I had half an onion hanging around in the fridge, so I became inspired. I made cream of onion soup! I started by making a basic white sauce (butter, flour, milk, beef broth) and then added some chopped onion which I later strained out. My husband said it was very good and requested it again!

This odd looking substance is called 'natto.' This is a very healthy dish that only about half of Japanese people can stand to see, smell or eat. To be blunt, it is rotting soy beans. It is very sticky when mixed and forms strands than can only be compared to a spider web. Much to everyone's shock in Japan, I was able to eat natto and enjoyed it very much. I honestly don't smell anything... Because of the bacteria which are fermenting the beans, it is very beneficial for the digestive system. Though some claim it aids in weight loss, I think it is related to the high protein content which fills you up and makes you less hungry. Or maybe the smell alone makes you lose your appetite. The green flecks are green onion.

Natto stuffed into abura-age tofu pouches and then lightly fried is delicious beyond measure! My husband said it is a specialty to his home town Niigata.

Yesterday my husband made BBQ steak, Japanese style. He cubed the steak and marinated in sake. After grilling, he topped it with grated daikon radish and ponzu (citrus soy sauce). It was a fabulous treat, as we rarely eat steak. Seeing as we bought it for 2 dollars, it was great!

Ears of fresh corn were on sale for .59 cents so we bought a couple and grilled them. Cutting them this size is a Japanese custom and makes it much easier to eat.

These are not basic chocolate chip cookies. Actually they are icebox cookies, meaning you either freeze or refrigerate the dough. You can shape the dough into a log and slice (what I did) or roll it out and cut them. I prefer the sliced cookies because I can easily make them thick. I added cornstarch to the flour mixture because it gives the cookies a shortbread-like texture. These cookies are nice with glazed fruit, but all I had was chocolate (not a bad thing!) Chocolate is never bad! ^_^

Matcha and Green Tea

Well, here is my husband's bento for today. Though I'm sure he doesn't approve of the pink container...well...what can I say...it is cute. ^_^ This bento is made using the leftover meat sauce from last night. I think the sauce suits white rice very well. It is kind of like eating chili. The cucumbers have a dash of vinegar, salt and black sesame seeds. The closed containers are shown below:

I really love these containers. The 'happy sweet berry' container is so adorable! I have a pink version of the blue bento box for my own lunches. In fact, my bento making cupboard is filled with all sorts of goodies that will eventually make their way onto this page.

Now who doesn't love a good cup of tea? Shown above is powdered green tea called Matcha. Usually it is darker, but I added milk and sugar so the colour is quite pale. The Japanese tea ceremony uses Matcha and recently it has become quite popular in Canada. Since Matcha is a powder, it is easy to use it in baking things such as Matcha Roll Cake. As well, Matcha can be sprinkled into yogurt, milk or ice cream. Matcha ice cream with dango and sweet bean is one of my favourite Japanese treats! Because Matcha is slightly bitter, in Japan it is often served with a small sweet.

 

Today I began to make 'miso tamago' or miso egg. This particular dish takes at least a day to make and is best left overnight. You start by hardboiling some eggs and then peeling them. Then you mix together about one tablespoon of miso and one teaspoon of maple syrup or honey together in a bit of clear wrap. Next you place the egg into the clear wrap and cover it with the mixture. You let this sit in the fridge overnight--the miso basically pickles the egg! The next day when you unwrap the egg, it has a rich golden colour and the flavour has actually seeped deep inside. It is perfect for bento! You can play with the flavours a bit too. I added spicy Korean bean paste to miso because my husband loves spice! It will go in his bento tomorrow.

You can leave them longer than overnight like this. The longer they sit, the richer the flavour, but I find that overnight is enough.

Supper tonight was super simple and a bit of a cheat! I made 'ochazuke' which is quite simply tea rice. However, I used the above flavouring packets, rather than brewing some strong flavoured green tea (not Matcha, but regular green tea from loose leaves). These packets contain green tea pellets, nori seaweed and dried salmon. Ochazuke is super easy to make. You place steamed rice in a bowl, add some fish such as tuna or salmon, sprinkle the packet and add hot water. Done! It is best served with wasabi and extra nori.

I also made some deviled eggs, salad and miso soup with our own garden turnips. It was simple, yet satisfying. I do feel like a bit of a cheat for using ochazuke flavour packets, but they are so very convenient. My husband's mom sent us lots from Japan, so I might as well us them. Often ochazuke is eaten for breakfast. When I lived in Japan, it was the first breakfast I ate there. The first time was very...interesting. Now it is routine. The moral? Don't be afraid to try something different!

Muffins and More!

Chocolate oatmeal muffins! Hooray! Fiber and chocolate together at last! Check out my half-eaten delicacy below:

It really was far too hot for baking (the inside temperature of our apartment is nearly always uncomfortably hot), but we were out of sweets (of any kind!). I really couldn't take tea without a little something and my husband always needs nibblies for his lunch, so I took a few minutes to bake the above pictured muffins. Really quite good. As with nearly all quickbreads, it freezes well.

Tonight was fried rice night. Don't you just love how I garnish everything with mitsuba? ^_^ Anyway, I used a bit of ground beef, along with egg, onion, garlic and a handful of frozen mixed veggies in this dish. The pickled ginger tops it off nicely.

The whole meal consisted of miso soup (with wakame) and a simple fresh salad. Surprisingly economical (thrifty lately...aren't I?).

Yesterday (Sunday) I made zaru soba for lunch. We didn't eat until 2pm, but this is a fairly quick meal to prepare. The dipping sauce in the cup actually came pre-made. I just added water to the liquid and ta-da! Dipping sauce!

This is just a closer view of the noodles. They are eaten cold and are very refreshing on a hot day.

Supper on Sunday night was chicken thigh pieces simmered in ginger, garlic, sugar, sake, mirin and soy sauce. This combination creates a glaze on the chicken. I served it on a giant shiso leaf.

Because I removed the thigh bone from the chicken myself, I had leftover bones which I used to make a clear soup. The cucumber in the small dish has a dressing of vinegar and soy sauce on it. As always, a salad and rice complete the meal. It may seem small, but it was satisfying. ^_^ P.S. Chicken thigh is best for simmering because it doesn't dry out like white meat.

Gyudon in a cute bowl!

My husband has most Tuesdays off, so that is his official cooking day (I love it!) This week he prepared the Japanese donburi (one bowl) dish called Gyudon. It consists of super thin slices of beef and onion wedges simmered in a sweet and salty broth of soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar and dashi (kelp and smoked fish broth) on top of steamed rice. So delicious when the broth soaks down into the rice! Pickled ginger and mitsuba are used to garnish the top.

The bowl is pretty cute too! My husband bought it from his Japanese tableware shop. It is almost identical to the bowls used by a shop he knows in Japan. It was such a deliciously authentic day! I teased him that he should cook everyday, but he promptly said one day per week is enough. ^_^

Japanese Style Curry

When people mention curry you usually think of India, not Japan. However, curry is huge in Japan and immensely popular with home cooks. To be fair, the curry in Japan has been altered to suit the Japanese palate, just as every country changes international cuisine to suit their tastes. As well in Japan, curry is almost exclusively eaten along side rice. However there are variations which use Indian Naan bread or udon noodles. The most basic and standard of Japanese curry recipes contains potato, carrot, onion and some sort of meat, coated in curry sauce (created using blocks of curry roux, available in varying degrees of 'heat and sweet'). Other additions to the curry are entirely up to the individual. Extra veggies are always nice, as is a chopped up apple for a little more 'sweet'. Basically you just fry the meat and veggies in a little oil, then add enough water to cover them. Near the end of their cooking time, you reduce the heat and add the roux blocks gradually, until you reach your desired level of flavour and thickness (you can follow the measurements on the roux box, but it is easier to customize the curry by estimating). Did you know you can freeze curry in individual portions? It makes wonderful quick suppers or lunches!

Let's make some curry! First, gather together your ingredients. I am using pork, potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, garlic and ginger.

Prepare your vegetables by peeling and chopping them. Defrost the meat if necessary and chop it into bite sized pieces. Soak the peeled potatoes in cold water for 10 minutes to reduce the starch.

Add meat to a preheated pot or pan. When it has fried a little, add the veggies and cook until they absorb the oil. Then add water to cover them and let it boil for awhile.

When the ingredients are cooked, cut a few blocks of curry roux and add gradually to the water. You need to stir carefully to prevent burning. Burnt curry is not savable! You may need to add more water or more roux, depending on your thickness and taste preference.

Serve the curry in a single bowl along side steamed rice. Delicious! Don't forget to freeze the leftovers or refrigerate them if you are going to eat it for lunch the next day. In Japan they say that the flavour of curry improves if it can sit in the refrigerator overnight. Try it for yourself! Curry roux blocks can be purchased from most mainstream grocery stores in the asian section. The most popular brand is called Glico or House. Try it for yourself!