Shabu Shabu

Shabu shabu has been one of the well know Japanese cuisines in the US.
My most favorite type of shabu shabu is Agu buta or Agu pork from Okinawa.
They really melt on your tongue. 
Yes, they are fatty :)  Mmmmm.


Winter in Tokyo is not my favorite,
especially when you have to wear heels in wind gusts.
However, the food is amazing there in the winter.
That really helps me tolerate the wind!

Tea Bowl

Having matcha or green tea in a tea bowl is very special.
I just feel like being an authentic Japanese person (which I am).


Sometimes it is hard to realize what cultural background I have while spending everyday wearing jeans and a camisole under the sunny sky.


Among the tea bowls I have seen so far, my favorite tea bowl is the ones with black glaze.
The vivid green of matcha truly stands out in dark surface.  Very pretty.


I just need to be careful not to have it at night so that I have to stay awake for no reasons...




Photo:
Yuteki Tenmoku Matchawan by Taku Nonaka
http://www.japanpotterynet.com/en/products/detail.php?product_id=1226

Half Year

This year has been going really busy and fast !!!
That is a great thing :)


It is not that I have forgotten to update this blog.
It just did not happen...


Oh, I feel bad.


We are currently working on a new project and I will be able to introduce you very soon !!!




By the way, I was showing how I make ginger tea to my in-laws the other day and they loved it.
It is very easy.
You just need a ginger root.  Peel a small piece and slice them.  Leave them in a teapot with tea leaves.
That's it !!!
You will feel your finger tips and toes warm :D


Great way to keep your body warm in air conditioned room !

Happy 2011 !!!

How was your winter holiday?
I am sure everyone had a great warm winter vacation.


In Japan the first seven days of January are traditionally New Year Holidays when I was a child.
Now it is the first three days.
It used to be from New Year Day to January 20th.
Our life is apparently getting busier and faster and I hope it is a good thing.


No matter how rapidly our life style changes, the Japanese New Year cuisine called osechi has not changed much.
I just love looking at them how pretty they are decorated.
Of course it is very delicious and healthy as well.

Wishing you a very wonderful coming year!!!

Matsutake

I love mushroom dishes especially the ones in Japanese cuisine.
You can find enoki, shitake, shimeji or maitake mushrooms at American markets now these days, but not matsutake.
This mushroom called matsutake has an amazing aroma and just triggers your appetite.
I saw some at Japanese and Korean super markets in LA.  Maybe I should try them soon!

Sweet potatoes

It will be a perfect time to eat sweet potatoes soon in Japan :D
There are many different type of sweet potato dishes, my favorite one is called "sweet potato"......!


It is a sweet that is made out of sweet potatoes.  Basically it is mashed sweet potatoes mixed with sugar, milk, butter, cinnamon or vanilla that is formed in oval in most cases with yolk brushed over and baked.
We call sweet potatoes satsuma imo in Japanese and the sweet potato sweets "sweet potato."

It sounds more like "sui - to po te to" (sue e eat oh poe te toe)

Red Beans

Japanese people love sweetened red beans.  They go well with anything!

You can wrap it with a rice cake or wrap rice cakes with it ;)  It tastes amazing with ice cream, especially the green tea flavor.  An-pan or red bean filled bread is also popular.  

It is not only sweet but it is really healthy too.  People say that they have lots of vitamin B1.  That helps to reduce fatigue, stiff shoulders, muscle ache, etc.

I am sure eating too much would not help so much...but it is good to know that at least it is some way healthy!

Amazing Soy Beans

Soy beans are amazing when I think about it.

It tastes so good when you boil them and sprinkle some salt.

You can mix edamame beans with steamed rice and saturate it with soy sauce.

Soy sauce is made out of soy beans.

Miso paste is made out of soy beans.

Tofu is made out of soy beans.

Soy milk is made out of soy beans.

Natto is made out of soy beans.

Wow!

From one kind of plant, you can enjoy a lot of different flavors.

Medicine

My friend seems he is catching a cold. He sounds like he is losing his voice.
Some people know tea with ginger is good for your throat.
What do you do when you feel like you are getting sick?

In Japan, we drink tamago-zake.

Basically it is sake mixed with a raw egg.

It has to be a very fresh egg, of course. The eggs in Japan are freshly laid and people eat them raw all the time.

Here is a recipe. If you ever go visit Japan, you can try this.

1) Warm sake.

2) Put row egg and sugar in a bowl and mix them well.

3) Strain it to make it smooth.

4) Pour sake into egg little by little as stirring it.

5) You can add little ginger or use honey instead of sugar.

What is that?

A lot of people have asked me what they are.

The white looking threads on sushi or sashimi plate.

Some people even asked me if they are edible.

It's called tsuma. They are made out of daikon or Japanese radish.

In Japan, tsuma could be seaweed.

They are edible and good for you. They are used to decorate the plate, but also the radish and seaweed decrease the smell of raw fish and kill the germs!

Sake

Sake is popular here in California.
You find it at any sushi restaurants.

I of course love drinking it, but also love taking a bath in it.
You do not use a whole bottle of sake in the tub.
You can put a half cup of sake and it makes your skin so smooth.
It's best to get the ones with no additives.
It really changes your skin!
Don't worry you won't get drunk bathing in it :)

Tofu Ice Cream

It is getting hot every day and we crave for ice cream :)

I crave for this one ice cream from Kyoto.

When I visited Kyoto, I ran into an amazing tofu ice cream.

I had had tofu ice cream many times and even made one before, but this one was exquisite!

The texture was really smooth and creamy, but light.

You don't feel like you are eating a lot of fat. You feel healthy.

I wish I could obtain the recipe. I would open a store in an instant!

The most unique part of the ice cream is that it does not fall when you put it upside down!!!

How does that work?

I just don't know.

The guy who invented this said it was a secret recipe...

Here's the photo I took of the ice cream I ordered and Tofu ice cream man.

Plum

In Japan, Plum trees start blooming at the beginning of February.

They decorate the cold sky with reddish pink and white flowers.

I always feel that spring is near us...

My friend from Japan has arrived here to study last week and I visited her.

She gave a piece of dried umeboshi, sour plum, to chew on while driving.

As soon as I tasted the sweet and sour juice in my mouth, I remembered the flowers of plume blooming this season.

It was a nice sense of memory I had.

Miso

What do you usually eat when you crave a light snack?

Is it a sandwich? Crackers? Or sweets?

I have mentioned that I crave for sweets in my last blog.

Now I'd like to talk about miso, fermented soy bean paste.

Many of you have tried miso soup at local Japanese restaurants or even Yoshinoya if you happen to live in southern California.

When I get a little hungry, but don't crave for sweets, I make miso onigiri, rice ball.

To make it, you simply place some steamed rice on your wet hands and cup them to make it into triangle or ball shape and put some miso paste all around it.

It has less calorie than eating chocolate or cookies and tastes just great.

(Be careful putting too much paste)

I love foods so much! I guess I cannot stop talking about food...

Sweet Craving

I love sweets. I love any type of sweets.

Sometimes I crave for certain sweets.

Chocolate, tiramisu, cheesecake, caramel, ice cream...etc. etc.

Sometimes I crave for anko, sweetened red beans.

You probably have tried red bean ice cream at a Japanese restaurant or from Trader Joe's.

What I crave for is a type of mochi called Akafuku, rice cake covered with anko from Ise City in Japan.

They have a little cafe in Ise by Ise Jingu, Ise Grand Shrine, in Mie prefecture.

Not only does this taste amazing, this traditional Japanese architecture offers a great experience.

You can watch ladies making this with their hands over the glass.

They sit on their knees the whole time while they are making it.

Of course, freshly made mochi tastes just amazing!

Yuzu

I love this fruit called yuzu. As you see it in the photo, it is a kind of citrus you can get in winter.

The aroma of it is really soothing and just a tiny peel makes the food different.

My mother makes hot udon with a few yuzu peels sprinkled over when we get sick.

It is just so cozy to get sick at home with your mom cooking.

I don't like to be sick, but I like to get this special treatment.

Actually even you are really sick and don't feel like eating, this yuzu aroma udon makes your body warm and you feel much better right away.

Well, you do not need to be sick to enjoy this fruit.

You can sprinkle tiny peels over salad or even steak if you like the citrusy flavor.

Addiction of Raw Fish

Sushi is now a world wide well known cuisine.
When I first met my husband, he had never had sushi.
Well, he chose not to eat them because he was afraid of getting sick from eating something raw.
I kept telling him he was missing out a lot and I don't know anyone who got sick from it.
So he finally gave up and had a bite of raw salmon.
That was it.
Ever since then, he cannot wait to go eat out at sushi restaurants.
You live once, and might as well, try it for once.
Now I cannot wait to take him to Japan and eat sushi there :)

Cooking

Just wondering how many ways there are to cook food.

In Japanese cooking, we eat food raw, grilled, broiled, baked, fried, steamed, boiled, cooked in soup, dried, smoked, and fermented...

I think we cover pretty much every way of preparing food.

People used to be so experimental!

Photo
"Japanese Cooking" available at Casanooah

O-toso

Its called o-toso, I was a little child but I do not remember exactly when I first had it.

In Japan, it is just a traditional thing to have o-toso, a cup or sip of sake on New Year Day.

I did not know what it meant or anything, but I was looking forward to it every year even though I did not like the taste of it.

Well, I still do not know what o-toso is, but luckily we can look it up in Wikipedia. Hehehe.

Here it goes.

Toso is drunk to flush away the previous year's maladies and to aspire to lead a long life. For generations it has been said that "if one person drinks this his family will not fall ill; if the whole family does no-one in the village will fall ill", and has been a staple part of New Year's osechi cuisine in Japan.

Oh, nice!

Now we probably had good enough amount for a whole world this year to avoid swine flue!