Cloudberry Jam on Cheesecake

Japanese Cheesecake with Cloudberry Jam from Finland Thank you sooooooooo much, dear readers, for letting me know how well cloudberry jam goes with cheesecake. I know -- only one person actually mentioned it, but I'm sure there were many, MANY others who were nodding enthusiastically in front of the display. I'm sure there were, because the combination is THIS GOOD! YUM! Oh, this cheesecake? No, I didn't bake it. It was store-bought -- one of those affordable sweets from Japanese convenience stores. And though it was labeled "baked cheesecake," it looked so white and creamy that I thought it was a gelatin cheesecake. But I definitely loved this baked one. Yes, with this berry jam from the country of Muumipeikko (Moomin), it was ... Heavenly. Divine. Mmmmmmm...... :) BTW, my favorite is Nuuskamuikkunen (Snufkin). Categories: Sweets

Spiced Lingonberry Cake -- Obachan's Version

Jams from Finland :) I don’t know how many times I have repeated this on my blog, but blogging has truly broadened my horizons. Not only it has increased my culinary knowledge, but it gave me chances to taste some foods that I can never buy in this rural city in Japan, even by ordering online. This time it was these jams. I got these jams several weeks ago from someone in Finland who I came to know through blogging. Spiced Lingonberry Cake - Obachan's Version - Actually we do have lingonberries in northern part of Japan, and I have tasted lingonberry jam once before when a friend of mine gave me a tiny jar of it as a souvenir. I loved the jam very much, but it was such a small amount and it looked obviously expensive, so all I could do was spreading it very thinly on my toast several mornings. Using it for cooking/baking was totally out of question. But this time, given this large jar of much tastier lingonberry jam from Finland, I felt no hesitation. ;) The night I received these jams, I made a dish which was sort of like mock “Swedish meatballs” and enjoyed it with generous amount of this lingonberry jam. (Sorry, no photos.) Maybe it was a strange idea to choose a Swedish dish to use the berry jam from Finland, but I really wanted to try the jam with some kind of meat, and when I googled for an idea, the combination of Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam looked like a must-have. Of course I didn’t have enough ingredients to make “real” Swedish meatballs, but even with my “mock” dish, I was able to find out how the jam goes well with meat. Mmmmmm..... And this is my second attempt with the lingonberry jam. I adopted the recipe from this site (scroll down), and reduced it to half. I didn’t have sour cream and it was raining outside (meaning that I didn’t feel like going grocery shopping), I substituted it with yogurt and cottage cheese. So, again, my cake must have been pretty different from what it should be – perhaps much softer, fluffier and lighter-tasting. But I’m happy to say that I do love my “mock” spiced lingonberry cake very much. This sweet-n-tart cake was perfect for the tea time on this dull, rainy afternoon. ... Now what should I use the other kind of jam: cloudberry jam for? That is something I've never ever had before, and sooooooooo tasty! :D Categories: Sweets

Sweet Seasons / May 2008 - Iris -

"Iris" by Nishigawaya Maybe some of you have heard of Japanese old custom of taking a herbal bath called "shobu-yu" on the 5th of May? It was part of several traditional customs to celebrate Boy's Day (which is now "Children's Day" to be more politically correct). And the herb thrown into bathtub for this custom is called shobu. It seems that shobu is usually translated as "iris," but to be precise, the shobu used for this herbal bath does not have flowers like those in above photo; it looks more like cattail (typha). (See the photos of shobu plant and shobu-yu here.) Nevertheless, many Japanese still associate iris flowers with this old custom and with the month of May. Actually, late May and early June are iris season around here, so it is no surprise to see lovely iris-shaped wagashi at most wagashi shops at this time of the year here. Categories: Wagashi

Garden Report - May 2008 -

Basil Chervil Sweet Marjoram Blueberries Today was not a good day for photo shooting. It was so cloudy and humid most of the day. But the green of my herbs looked really refreshing to my tired eyes when I came back from work today, and I couldn't help taking some shots. :) Categories: Garden

Seared Tuna with Soy Butter Sauce

Seared Tuna with Soy-Butter Sauce This is an idea which I stole from a Japanese magazine a while ago. (I forgot if it was "Orange Page" or "ESSE.") And IIRC, this was an idea by a Japanese chef named Kentaro. He is a well-known chef in Japan (partly because his mom is a popular chef) and he has written many cook books. There are some Japanese people who do not care for his recipes very much, saying that his recipes tend to be a bit too buttery, and I might as well agree with that opinion. But this recipe somehow caught my attention, and I was totally happy that I tried it out. This was actually a new discovery to me. Yes, I knew that soy-butter sauce is great with meat or fish. What I didn't know before was that how great green onions (negi) taste when sauteed with soy-butter sauce! Honestly, I didn't think the fish was terribly great, but I just loved the green onion topping with rich soy-butter sauce. Yum! :D Categories: Japanese

Whole Wheat Bread

Whole Wheat Bread This is a very good recipe from Allrecipes. Even I was able to bake something like this. :) The recipe does deserve five stars, I think.

Sweet Seasons / April 2008 - Butterfly -

"Butterfly" by Nishigawaya This wagashi reminded me of a white butterfly flying over a carpet of yellow nanohana (field musterd?) flowers. A charming sight which I really love to see every spring. I'm not sure what these pink stripes are supposed to be, but without them this wagashi would look rather boring, IMHO. Nanohana (field mustard) on the riverbank near my place In a way, this looks like a lovely gift box tied with a ribbon. :) Categories: Wagashi

Potato Sausage Cheese Muffins

Potato Sausage Cheese Muffins My Monday morning brunch. (On other days I have to eat breakfast very early -- and in a hurry -- to go to work before 7 AM, so recently Mondays are the only days that I can take time to enjoy brunch.) The recipe is here (in Japanese). *Woops, sorry! I forgot to mention that I replaced bacon in the original recipe with sausage. Diced potatoes were microwaved and then sauteed with onion and sausage before being mixed into the batter. With a good amout of black pepper mixed in, and grated cheese sprinkled on top (which was also my twist -- the original recipe does not call for grated cheese), these muffins tasted so good that I ate 4 of them at once. Mmmmm... Categories: Western-inspired

The Supermarket Chronicles - Part 3 -

My hometown used to be a small fishing village, which merged into a city decades ago. When I was a kid, I played on the beach (actually more like a rocky seashore) every day, and at spring tide, the entire family spent a whole day picking shell fish and sea weeds there. When my grandma was young, according to dad, she would go to the local fishing port every morning to buy fresh fish, and serve sashimi (sliced raw fish) at breakfast. Yes, as you might know, Japanese traditional breakfast often includes grilled (dried) fish. But I don’t think eating raw fish first thing in the morning is a very popular custom in this country. Personally I don’t even want to give it a try. :P So you think that my work in the fish section of the supermarket may make me homesick? Well... yes, sometimes. When we sold some fresh abalones there the other day, I couldn't help saying, "Gosh, I wanna go abalone picking right now!" as I was packing them. But most of the time I'm busy discovering and learning new things about the seafood diet here, which is a little different from what I was used to in my hometown, and that is really interesting. First of all, I was amazed to see so many elderly people in the neighborhood being the regular visitors of the fish section of this supermarket. They usually come in as soon as the store opens. I mean, I knew that older folks love fish. But this town is quite far from the ocean-- compared to my hometown-- so I didn’t expect the older folks in a place like this to be THAT crazy about eating fresh and nicely fatty fish. The privilege of working at this "interactive" fish section is being able to observe or even be acquainted with such regular customers. Although more and more fish and shellfish are farmed these days, still the items sold in the fish section are largely affected by the season and the weather here. There are regular items that we have on the shelves almost every day, but they don't always come from the same place, and they taste quite differently depending on where they are from. So I can see those daily visitors come to the store being pretty excited, wondering what goodies they are going to find that day. A couple of dressed up elderly women usually come in as soon as the store opens... maybe every other day. They seem to be meeting up at the entrance and enjoying strolling around in the fish section together, trying to pick their "sashimi of the day." And there is a grandma who just loves our saba-zushi (mackerel sushi). We usually make and sell saba-zushi on Thursdays and Saturdays around lunch time, and she never misses those days. Every time she comes, she claims that she is a big fan of our saba-zushi. Sometimes we have to tell her that we can't make the sushi because we have no mackerels, then she gets so disappointed. And in early April, the "bonito bones craze" has started. Every day a bunch of people come in -- as soon as we open -- almost frantically looking for bonito scraps, especially bones. For what? For simmering bamboo shoots. Maybe those who are familiar with traditional Japanese dishes have heard of “takenoko no Tosa-ni (simmered bamboo shoots, Tosa-style)?” The recipe calls for a bunch of bonito flakes, and the dish was named so because Tosa (former name of Kochi prefecture) is famous for bonito flakes. But I tell you what -- The hard-core bamboo shoot lovers in Tosa do not use bonito flakes for that dish; they use bonito bones. I didn’t know that because my mom simmers bamboo shoots a little differently, so I was surprised with their enthusiasm. At the supermarket, we usually put more than 10 packs of bonito scraps on the shelf, and in almost less than one hour, they are gone. And we keep hearing "Don't you have bonito bones today?" from the customers who came too late. Curiosity made me try using bonito bones for this traditional dish, and yes, now I know why they make such a big deal out of the bones of this particular fish. Some people may find it too fishy, and the chefs of sophisticated kaiseki would frown, but using the bones does give more richness and more flavor to the dish with almost “sweet” aroma (at least while the dish is warm). And -- this may sound barbaric but -- the fish meat left around the bones tastes oh so good! ;P So now I understand why bonito bones are so popular. But I couldn’t understand why the store sells so many different kinds of fish guts as well. I know some fish scrap is great for making stock and some fish egg taste great if cooked properly. But some fish guts seemed just useless and unprofitable because they were sold so cheap. Then one day an elderly woman asked me, “Oh, you don’t have XXXXX (<-- name of the particular fish organ) today?” and so sadly added, “Ah, nothing for my neko-chan (kitty) today!” Boy, all those fish guts and strings that made me think, “How the hell do they cook and eat this stuff?” were for beloved neko-chans in this community! I wonder how many other supermarkets in Japan pack and label foods for four-legged customers. No, I’m not being cynical. I like it. It makes me feel that this place is really like a good old, community-based store. Some of the regular customers of the supermarket deserve to be called "fish experts," I think. They always ask my boss detailed questions directly over the display case. (As I wrote before, the refrigerating display case is tall enough to hide the filleting process behind it, but to show the boss’s cap to let customers know that he is there to answer questions.) Maybe the experts are ex-owners of fish stores or those who moved into this town from fishing villages or chefs at local eating places and bento shops. Some of them often buy many (or all) packs of certain items at once, so I need to be careful when I see them. I’m supposed to check the display case once in a while and tell boss before certain items are completely sold out. But when such customers come, the part of the shelf which was full a minute ago can be totally empty when I came back from checking on the neighboring frozen seafood section. :O Among the “expert” customers, there is an elderly woman who loves sayori (Japanese needlefish) so much and always buys a few kilograms of them at once. Inspired by her, I once bought some real fresh ones in late March and made sashimi at home. Yes, it was my PF (preparing fish) 103: filleting Japanese needlefish. But I wasn't taught how to do it at work; I found a how-to website on the net and practiced at home. (These photos were taken before I filleted them, but I must say that the fish looked much, much more beautiful than these photos.) The fresh sayori sashimi was oh so heavenly good! No wonder she buys THAT many of them for herself and her neighbors. Categories: Supermarket

Whey Pancakes

Yes, I tried draining yogurt again. This time I used a little more expensive brand which tastes richer and less sour. Though the drained yogurt still did not taste as good as cream cheese, it was much better than the last time. I mixed it with grated garlic and mentaiko and made a dip. It was pretty nice on Ritz crackers; I enjoyed them with a couple of glasses of very, very affordable wine. Then I was left with the by-product, whey again. This time I used it for pancakes. A safe idea, isn't it? Yes, it was a safe idea AND a good idea. :) Oh, I almost forgot. Here's a question which almost all(?) Japanese home bakers have in mind or have been asking but not properly answered yet: How long does whey keep in the fridge? Would the expiration date of whey be the same as that of the original yogurt? Experts all over the world, please tell us the truth. ;) Categories: Sweets

Photogenic, But... (2)

Strawberry Tarts (which turned out rather disappointing...) Here's another one which looks pretty nice in these photos but didn't taste so great. The biggest mistake was the tart shell. I used my oil crust recipe, but for some reason that I still cannot understand, I thought that the baking time was 10 minutes instead of 15 minutes. And I didn't bother to check my recipe. It was an easy mistake to fix -- if I had noticed it in time -- but when I found out what was wrong, the shells were already filled with the cream and strawberries. :P So the shells were done but not crunchy and had a little "raw" taste of the whole wheat, the instant pastry cream was too light, and the strawberries were not impressively sweet. But they do please my eyes in these photos, at least, so I guess I didn't make these for nothing, after all. Haha... Categories: Sweets

Whey Biscuits

Whey Biscuits It was more than three years ago and on Jason's site (actually in one of the comments) when I first read about the idea of draining yogurt to come up with a cream-cheese like stuff. Since then, the idea had been on my list of "things to try out someday in the near future." Then draining yogurt has become popular among young Japanese bakers in the past couple of years, like many other "healthy substitution ideas" invented in Japan or imported from abroad. And when I found a Japanese cheesecake recipe with drained plain yogurt as the main ingredient, I instantly decided to try it out, remembering what I read on Jason's site years ago. The result? Well... I guess it was no one's fault that I found the healthier version of cheesecake rather disappointing. I found it too light and too sour, despite the numerous applauding comments to the Japanese recipe site. On my second try I added some cottage cheese and I liked it much, much better. Plain yogurt drained overnight Now, the question I came up with after draining yogurt was what I should do with the whey. Of course, throwing it away was out of question. Following a recipe I found on the net, I made a healthy, refreshing drink by adding honey and soy milk to the whey, which was really, really good. Also, I tried out adding some whey when making biscuits, and the result is what you are seeing in the photo on top of this post. Yes. It was another great idea. The biscuits were excellent. But soon I started asking myself this question: it is really worthwhile to separate yogurt and whey? These biscuits could have tasted just as great even if I used regular plain yogurt instead of whey alone, and using plain yogurt could have been more nutritious. What do you think? If the drained yogurt tastes more cream-cheese like, I would use it for cheesecakes, cheese tarts or dips and quit using cream cheese. But when I tried those ideas, I ended up adding some cottage cheese to make it richer and less sour. Then maybe it is easier and more nutritious just to start with cottage cheese and plain yogurt in the first place??? BTW, I did try washing hands with whey as recommended on a couple of Japanese websites. It sure made the skin moist and smooth. ;) ------ I added a couple of cherry blossom photos to my birthday cake post, if you're interested.

Sweet Seasons / March 2008 - Hinamatsuri (Doll Festival) -

Odairi-sama and Ohina-sama (Male and Female dolls representing the Emperor and Empress) by Nishigawaya Japanese doll festival held on March 3rd is called Hina-matsuri. Hina dolls are traditional ornamental dolls used for this festival only. For more details about Japanese doll festival, see this site. The hina dolls are supposed to be taken down and put back in the boxes as soon as the festival is finished, because there is an old saying that if you have the dolls on display for too long, the girl(s) in the family will marry late. Now you know the reason why I'm still single: my family was lazy after the doll festival. ;) I really love these cute wagashi hina dolls. They do look like a man and woman in kimono. They are in love. ;) To some wagashi and tea ceremony learners or experts living in and outside Japan: I’m sorry that I cannot give you, at this point, a decent explanation about what these cute dolls are made with. I’m sure these are made with shiro-an (sweetened white bean paste) based dough, but not sure if it is nerikiri or konashi. Again, I forgot to ask the clerk at the store. I’m not sure what the difference between nerikiri and konashi is in the first place, if there is a difference anyway. Some even say that they are the same thing called differently in different areas in Japan, but others say that they are two different things. Really confusing. I hope I can give you a better explanation sometime in the near future. ;) Categories: Wagashi

Garden Report - March 2008 -

Blueberry (Sunshine Blue) Mitsuba Sunshine Blue again ....................................... Spring has come. .......................................... ;) Categories: Garden

* Happy Birthday to Me *

My Homemade Birthday Cake Pink has never been my favorite color. When I took photos of my birthday cakes with flowers in previous years, I never used pink flowers. However, I do love the delicate pinkish white of cherry blossoms. I can never fully explain how much I love to see that color in spring -- the season when everything looks fresh and alive. Usually cherry trees start blooming in late March around here, but I don’t see too many of them around my birthday. That is why it never occurred to me to relate my birthday to that beloved blossoms. But this year, because of the warm weather, some cherry trees in this neighborhood are already in full bloom now. And as I was riding my bike enjoying the view of such early blossoms yesterday, I thought, “Maybe the day I was born was a warm, sunny day like this, and some cherry trees might have been in half-bloom then, if not full-bloom.” I remember that there were a couple of cherry trees near my parents’ house, including the big one at the gate of our local shrine. I have heard from mom that when she gave birth to me, it was not easy because I was a breech baby. So when I was born safely, someone in my family must have run to the relatives’ house to tell the good news (because we didn't have the phone at that time yet. Ahem!) and visited the shrine to thank God on his/her way home. That “someone” might have looked up the cherry blossoms blooming in the spring sunshine, with the blue sky in the background, and felt rejoiced. When I thought about that, I suddenly felt like making a birthday cake with cherry blossoms. Actually, using cherry blossoms for baking is not such a crazy idea. Recently I see more and more sakura (cherry blossom) cakes and cookies being sold at the stores as well as their recipes shared on the net. You think we make jam out of the blossoms and use it for baking? No. Usually we use salted cherry blossoms or liqueur flavored with the blossoms. For the cake I made this time, I used the sakura liqueur to flavor the top layer and sank some salted sakura in it. The white layer is the mixture of canned white peach and yogurt set with gelatin, and the bottom is a graham cracker crust. The original recipe (Japanese) is here. As you can see in the photo on top of this post, the pink layer of my cake was a bit too soft and the edges didn’t turn out as sharp as I wanted. I was too lazy to buy gelatin sheets (leaf) and used regular gelatin powder, thinking that it would turn out firm enough if I refrigerate the cake longer than recommended in the recipe. Wrong! :P Now I know that there was a good reason for using different kinds of gelatins for those layers: sheet (leaf) for the top layer and powder for the white layer. I tried to hide the ragged edges with whipped cream, but obviously it wasn't a good idea... :P So I can't say that this was a great success. But there’s something I like so much about this cake – maybe the color combination? – and I'm glad that I chose to make this one for my birthday 2008. (I might try another sakura cake sometime soon...) ----- Let me add a little more about the aroma of the cherry blossoms. It’s kind of tricky. I don’t think that the blossoms themselves have such a distinctive fragrance like roses or plum blossoms do. When most Japanese smell things like incense, soap, cologne or sweets with “cherry blossom fragrance,” we are not associating it with the smell of the blossoms on the tree; actually we are associating it more with the smell of a Japanese wagashi called Sakuramochi. The smell of sakuramochi comes from the salt-preserved cherry leaf wrapped around the rice cake, and according to some scientific websites, the smell is caused by a substance named “coumarin“ which is contained in the cherry leaves. They say that the substance does not produce the smell while in the live cherry leaves, but does so when the leaves are salt-preserved. Interesting! Now, many Japanese kids hate sakuramochi because of its smell, and I was one of them, too. I don’t know how to describe the smell… it is somewhat sweet, but different from typical floral fragrance. It’s more… how shall I say… starchy? I don’t know…　Anyway, I would say that whether you love sakura-flavored sweets/drinks really depends on whether you can truly love the smell of coumarin or not. (I’ve read that Polish vodka called zubrowka has the coumarin smell, too. So don't be surprised if a Japanese who smelled zubrowka would say, "Gosh, this smells like a cherry blossom rice cake!") Now, being an adult, I don’t hate that smell of salted cherry leaves any more –- I even love it. But let me warn you… If you are interested in trying out some cherry-blossom flavored sweets/drinks, don’t feel too discouraged if you find them quite different from what you expected. ;) Categories: Sweets

Photogenic but...

Sea Bream Carpaccio I think this carpaccio looks pretty healthy and maybe tasty, too? But the truth is that it didn't taste as good as it looked. My mistake was using a buntan for this dish. Yes, the citrus fruit from my dad's garden. As I wrote in my previous post, buntan looks like grapefruit but its flesh is firmer and dryier tnan that of grapefruit, so when we (my family members) eat it, we usually tear and open up each segment like this photo below and bite the flesh off from the membrane. And we call the opened-up segment "baby chick." Cute, ha? Anyway, for this carpaccio, I made a simple sauce with olive oil, vinegar, garlic, salt and black pepper. Then I added some freshly-squeezed buntan juice, thinking that citrus juice would give a refreshing kick and go well with the sea bream. But I was too lazy to take the flesh out of the segments and squeezed the flesh and white parts together, so the sauce turned out a little bitter because of the bitterness from the pulp(?). I also added some chunks of buntan flesh to the vegetables. Actually this was not a terrible idea, I would say. The sauce and the citrus chunks tasted pretty good together. But I just thought the buntan and the sea bream would definitelly taste better when eaten separately, and couldn't see any reason why they should be mixed together like this. Hahaha... Nevertheless, they look nice together in these photos, I think... ;) Oh, BTW, this sea bream is not the one in the photos in my last post. I bought a pack of sea bream sashimi for this carpaccio. Categories: Western-inspired

The Supermarket Chronicles - Part 2 -

Here in this southern city in Japan, spring comes rather suddenly. It seems like yesterday when I posted about my “high-tech” underwear, but now-- in the past couple of days -- it has been as warm as late April. Yep, NO MORE HIGH-TECH UNDERWEAR! :D It’s been a little more than a month since I started working at this supermarket, and I guess I’m gradually getting used to the work there. Yep, the “work” there, but not necessarily the “people” there. ;) Actually there was some “personnel change” there, and I have a lot to tell you about that, but I’ll post about it some other time. Anyway, so far my main task there has been packing and labeling seafood. But I knew from the beginning that they were going to teach me how to fillet different kinds of fish. It is partly because some fish are big and need to be properly cut before being packed and displayed on the shelves, but also because the fish section of this supermarket is more like a good-old fish store. At many supermarkets here in Kochi, the seafood section is no different from other sections in the store; you just silently take packed products from the shelf and go to the cash register. Usually they have filleted fish only on display so that customers won't need help. But the seafood sections of some supermarkets are more “interactive” – you can talk to the staff in the small kitchen behind the showcase. You can take a packed whole fish -- relatively small ones-- from the showcase and ask the staff, “Hey, can you fillet this?” or “Can you descale and gut this fish? I want to simmer it.” It’s something unique about fish section, I think … You know, in other sections of the supermarket, customers may ask questions about the products, but they won’t ask something like, “Hey, can you peel these potatoes for me?” or “Can you seed these lemons so that I can squeeze the juice out of them easily?” Right? ;) About two weeks ago, my boss taught me how to cut and slice octopuses. It was the easiest one … maybe it was Preparing Fish 101. Now, this time it was PF 102: preparing small tai (sea bream) for simmering or grilling. What I have learned was how to remove scales, gills and guts from small sea breams so that they can be grilled like this or simmered like this. My boss gave me five small ones left from the previous day and told me to practice on them. Now, big sea breams are very expensive fish which are used for various celebrations, and preparing them for celebration feasts require real professional skills because their bones are extremely tough and some have poison in their fins. It would be quite a while before I start practicing on such big ones, but for now I’m happy with being able to prepare these small ones. After the work that day, I bought two small sea breams and reviewed, in my kitchen, what I learned. I took these photos then. Yes, I'm working on a new project, too. I want to become able to take beautiful photos of fish and other seafood -- not just the fish/seafood dishes, but including fresh fish and seafood themselves. I think sweets are very photogenic, and so are some vegetables. But fish and seafood can look quite plain or even grotesque sometimes, so for me it's harder to take good-looking photos of them. Now I'm going to practice and experiment this and that in order to capture the beauty of those friends from the ocean. It must be an enjoyable challenge. Wish me luck. ;) Categories: Supermarket