Inexpensive Fun

Homemade strawberry Jam, Apple Preserves and leftover Hassaku Marmalade I don't know about other areas in Japan, but around here the price of strawberries is relatively low now. Or maybe the price itself is not very different but I see so many packs of strawberries on a wagon that says "for fruit juice." Yeah, those are overripe ones, almost rotten. Maybe berries are plentiful this year? Even my blueberry plant seems to have more flowers this spring. And at my favorite supermarket, they seem to have apples on sale more often this month than last month. (But why now? It's not apple season, right??) Well, I don't mind whatever the reason is. I just appreciate the fact that they are less expensive now, and have been making jam and preserves diligently these days. The above photo is showing only half of what I have made. I even make labels myself. It's so much fun and it doesn't cost much because I downloaded a free software and bought cheap sticker paper at Daiso 100 yen shop. Honestly, I think I'm better at making jar labels than making jam/preserves. To decide the amount of sugar to use, I usually start with "30% of the weight of the fruit" and adjust it according to how sweet the fruit itself is. And I add lemon juice little by little until I feel it was enough. But for some reason, the jam that tasted perfect when hot often does not taste very good when I use it after a few weeks... My tongue is not very trustworthy, I guess. BTW, I switched from white sugar to beet sugar after the Meniere's syndrome diagnosis. Although sugar was not what was causing the problem, I was told that I needed to improve blood circulation, so I felt like using healthier sugar (polysaccharide). But beet sugar really makes jam brown, doesn't it? I wonder if I could find beet gｒanulated sugar somewhere ... Anyway, you can expect a homemade apple pie post to come soon. ;) Categories: Sweets

Tasting The Bitterness Of Life...

Hassaku Marmalade One of the students of the language school I work for gave me a few hassaku oranges the other day. Now, I hate to say this but I'm not too crazy about hassaku. It's not easy to peel it like tangerine, and the white part can be quite bitter. Unless the fruit is very ripe and sweet, the bitterness from the pulp can really ruin the overall taste, and I often get disappointed. So, instead of eating them right away, I decided to make marmalade with them. That way I would be able to do something about the bitterness, I thought. It was not my first time making marmalade out of citrus fruit with bitter rind and pulp, such as konatsu. I had a great success before, and the key was rubbing the shredded rind with salt thoroughly before boiling and soaking it in water. That should work for hassaku oranges, too, I thought. How naive of me. I spent so much time doing this: ... and this: I rubbed these rind strips with salt, then boiled them, drained them, boiled again, drained again and repeated that for a couple more times. After that, I soaked them in water for at least three hours. Then added the flesh to the rind and cooked with a good amount of sugar. The result was... Gosh it was DARN B-I-T-T-E-R!! :O WHY???? I didn't get it. The rind didn't taste bitter very much when I tasted it before cooking. But for some reason, the marmalade turned out VERY bitter. Now how can you save bitter marmalade? I know something fatty can make bitterness milder, but I don't want any fatty stuff in my marmalade. Maybe more sugar and ... alcohol? Because in my hometown we use distilled spirit to remove astringent taste from persimmons... Finally I ended up cooking the marmalade again with more sugar and generous amount of leftover Myers's Rum. You know what? It helped!! The rum really added pleasant flavor and the bitterness became tolerable. But still it takes some courage to eat this hassaku marmalade on toasted bread or with yogurt. And I even tried combining it with something fatty, i.e. butter. I baked some into buttery pound cake. This cake certainly smelled heavenly with the butter and the rum. If the aftertaste of the hassaku rind did not ruin the harmony at the end, I could have called this cake a great success. - Sigh - So what did I learn from this experience? Often hard work does not get rewarded? That's Life? Or it is always sugar and booze that reduces the bitterness of life? :P Categories: Sweets

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

No, This is Not Tofu

Soy Milk Jelly with Kiwi Fruit Sauce Did you think that Obachan went nuts and poured kiwi fruit sauce over Morinyu tofu? No, not yet. I haven't gone that far ... at least at this point. ;) This is all because of a cheap kiwi fruit I bought today. It was sour -- so terribly SOUR! I got mad and immediately chopped up the fruit and threw it in a saucepan with bunch of sugar, a little water and sherry to make sauce. Then I thought, "How about panna cotta with kiwi sauce?" Doesn't it sound like a decent dessert? But when I opened the fridge, I found that the milk was expired. The only alternative was soy milk. Hence... this invention (if I may call it an invention. :P) The jelly did not taste like real panna cotta, and I didn't think the flavor of the soy milk made a perfect match with the kiwi. Still, the dessert was bearable, but I don't think I'm going to make this again. Haha... And I still have some kiwi sauce left. ... Another tart, maybe?? Categories: Sweets

Lovely Breakfast with Hawaiian Touch

Passion Fruit Butter Spread from Hawaii This was something totally new to me. And I'm so happy that I had a chance to taste this fruity spread. What a refreshing taste! You know, breakfast is very important to me. I never skip breakfast no matter what (though it should be called brunch rather than breakfast most of the time). And when I have a special food like this to start the day, it sure gives me energy to face whatever happens later. It's not just the good taste. It's the kindness and friendship associated with the food that helps me get going, I think. The problem is, though, that the heavenly taste of this spread makes me feel like staying at the breakfast table all day instead of going to work. :P Categories: Sweets

Green Ume Plum Jam

Green Ume Plum Jam on Yogurt (I know the jam doesn't look green but I used green ume plums) I didn’t have a great success when I tried making ume (Japanese plum) jam for the first time in 2005. I didn’t even think about making it in 2006. Now this year, what triggered me to give it another try was this shot of refreshingly green ume jam on someone’s blog. I thought, “Maybe mine didn’t taste very good last time because I used ripe ume plums. I might have a success if I use unripe, green ones.” So, here we go. Obachan’s ume-jam project. And you know what? I had a success this time! ;) The recipe? It's so simple… cannot be any simpler. 1 kg green ume plums Sugar (70 to 100 % of the weight of the seeded ume plums) This time I stayed on the safe side all the time and didn’t add any twist of my own. To get rid of the harshness, some recipes said soak plums in water for 3 hours and others said overnight, and I chose overnight. Some said boil ume and drain them just once, others said repeat it two to three times, so I did it three times. Then I soaked them in water and changed the water twice. This might have taken away the “wild” flavor of green plums too much, but I just didn’t want any harshness and didn’t want to hide it by adding lots of sugar, either. * The calyx(?-- the brown thing left at the stem end) needs to be removed with a toothpick before cooking the ume. The aroma of cooking ume plums was so wonderful. (It’s strange that I didn’t mention the aroma in my ume-jam post two years ago. Maybe ripe plums didn’t smell so good when cooking?) Seeding the boiled ume plums by hands was a bit messy task, but it was alright. After mincing them with a knife (maybe I should have used an electric blender), I cooked them with sugar without adding any water. I guess the seeded plums weighed about 800 g and the sugar I added was a little less than 600 g. This jam thickens so easily and sets wonderfully (maybe too much) when cooled. Absolutely no need to add pectin or anything. I love this green ume jam with yogurt so much. And here’s my adventure with the jam – spareribs with green ume jam glaze. They were a lot less greasy because of the refreshing sweet-n-sour jam. It was too bad that the glaze didn't keep the taste of ume at all, though…. Categories: Sweets, Japanese

Homemade Strawberry Jam on a Lazy Morning

Obachan's Homemade Strawberry Jam on Yogurt So it’s “Golden Week” here. I know almost everyone is traveling now, but I’m a lazy one, if not the laziest. :P And I wanted to post a pic that best describes how relaxing my Golden Week is. Yeah, traveling is great. Going abroad is even more exciting. But a lazy morning with homemade strawberry jam, homemade scones and yogurt (no, yogurt is not homemade) -- in the morning sunshine and gentle, soothing breeze coming through the lace curtain -- is not a bad idea, either. To be honest, I have never made strawberry jam before. The jam is too popular, thus has never tempted me. But when I saw some strawberries on sale at a nearby fruit shop yesterday, and remembered the recent comment by Ireney, I knew that I HAD TO make chunky strawberry jam and have it for breakfast in order to fully appreciate my days off in this beautiful time of the year. To my surprise, the jam turned out pretty good, with the perfect amount of tartness from lemon juice and the strawberries. And the berry chunks are just so… Mmmmm… What do I need to say? You already know how good they are, don't you? Oh, I have to try this with vanilla ice cream, too. It'll be the dessert after my lunch of takenoko gohan and miso soup today. Categories: Sweets

Kumquat Marmalade and Citrus Financier

Kinkan (Kumquats) I haven’t written about it here on this blog, but now I have a new nighttime job. Yesterday someone brought bunch of kinkan (kumquats) to the office, and this was my share of this lovely-looking citrus. To be honest, I’m not too crazy about kumquats. In my childhood, my grandma once boiled them with bunch of sugar and made me drink the soup when I had a bad cold. It was sweet but the bitterness from the rind was very unpleasant to me. Then she made me eat the boiled kumquat. Actually it tasted better, being less bitter from the boiling. But after eating a couple of them, I nauseated. (Sorry.) So I didn’t know what to do with these kumquats. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t want to eat them raw. And I ended up with the same old solution… marmalade. Hahaha… I googled and found some kumquat jam recipes on the net. They were so simple… Wash kumquats, boil them (to take away bitterness), halve, seed and chop them, then simmer with sugar and lemon juice for about an hour. And the amount of sugar was supposed to be apx. 50% of the weight of the seeded kumquats. Easy enough. When the kumquat marmalade looked done, I immediately tried it on buttered toast. Not bad…But I would never call it my favorite. Then what should I do with these three small jars of kumquat marmalade that I’m not too crazy about? Here comes the same old solution: Use it for baking. :P Hence, my first attempt with this cake. Kumquat citrus Financier When I posted about my angel food cake last year, I believed that it was the best way to use up the frozen egg whites. Well, not any more. From now on, “financier” will be my first choice. I know that it’s probably a less healthy choice, but think about the wide variety of flavors I can play with: cocoa, matcha, tea, citrus, fruits and various kinds of liquor, too… :) See the minced kumquat rind? BTW, now I’m terribly intrigued by those silicon mini-financier molds. But my concern is that most of them would probably be too big for my small oven-cum microwave. I mean, they would fit, but won’t be able to turn with the turntable inside the oven. Does anyone know if those silicon molds (Matfer, Flexipan, etc.) can be cut with scissors or something? Categories: Sweets

Obachan's Very First Lemon Curd

Lemon Curd OK, here’s the PART 2 of my lemony creations. The recipe is here. I had so much fun making this, singing with the songs from my portable digital audio player in my pocket as I stirred the curd until it thickened. My neighbors must have been sick of hearing my full Bon Jovi repertoire. Hahaha… :P This lemon curd tastes very good, but next time I’m going to try grating the lemon zest instead of finely shredding it, just to see which I like better. BTW, this is my first encounter with lemon curd, to be honest. I’ve heard/read about it and been wanting to make it myself someday, but never actually tried it until today. So I don’t know much about how to use it. What do you eat lemon curd with? Do you use this for baking? Any recommendations? ----- Thanks for all your suggestions, dear readers. OK. I tried lemon curd with scones this morning, as a starter. I loved it! :D Categories: Sweets

Kogyoku Apple Jam

Vanilla Ice Cream with Kotyoku(Jonathan) Apple Jam I’m glad that Kogyoku (Jonathan) apples are becoming popular around here recently. Now I know two supermarkets in my neighborhood where I can buy Kogyoku apples throughout the apple season. I used to envy those who can get granny smith for making apple desserts, but Kogyoku apples here are said to be a decent substitute. When I thought about making jam with these sour apples, an idea popped up in my mind. What if I use the skin, too? Would that make the jam red, or at least pink? So I googled, and found that quite many women in Japan thought the same thing. I found a Japanese website with appetizing photos of apple jam with red spots (the skin) showing here and there. I thought that the jam would look lovely with ice cream or yogurt. So I tried it out, with the amount of sugar being 25% of the weight of the Kogyoku apples. While in the pot, my jam looked pretty close to the jam on the Japanese website mentioned above, but after canning, mine turned darker orange. Mmmm.... And the color seems to be getting darker with time. The difference is: I used spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg, and I also added a little amount of pectin at the end, which was probably unnecessary. Though not too happy with the color, I like the taste of this jam very much -- I found the texture of the skin rather pleasant. But I’m not too crazy about the combination of this jam and buttered toast. Categories: Sweets

Burnt Jam

Thumbprint Cookies with Burnt Jam in the Center... OK. I finished all the posts I wanted to upload before the end of May, and now I can finally write about my last weekend. Yes, I stayed at my parents’ house, as I mentioned in my previous post, but my mom and I did not go to the beach. The weather wasn't good. If it was just the rain, we wouldn’t have minded. But it was almost like a storm, with strong winds and waves as high as typhoon waves. So, no abalone picking. No way. Instead, we (dad, mom and I) went to the orchard and picked konatsu oranges. At the dinner table at night, I was busy eating the dishes both mom and dad offered to me. Yep. Dad often cooks, too. It's not that he is into cooking; he is into health food. He loves growing “highly nutritious” veggies introduced in health magazines and trying out salads and veg. juice recipes he finds there. Mom offered me the pickles and simmered food she likes. Obviously, they are harvesting and cooking more than enough for just two of them. It’s not only vegetables that they need to consume. Dad grows many kinds of oranges -- maybe 6 to 7 kinds -- and even after dad sold them to several shops in town, plenty of not-good-enough-for-sale oranges are usually left on the trees or in the storage. So, what should we do with them? Juice? Jelly? Jam? Marmalade? Use them for baking? Mom and I always feel the pressure of having to do something about those leftover oranges. Mom is into making jam and sugared orange peels(?) these days. Last weekend, when I first went into the kitchen with mom, she looked at me with a big grin on her face and said, “Oh, here’s something for you.” Orange Jam – burnt. She said that she burnt a big potful (the biggest pot in house!) of orange jam about a week ago. I forgot what kind of oranges she said she used, but at least they were not konatsu. She insisted that the taste of the jam was not totally intolerable and I should be able to eat it with yoghurt. Another suggestion she made was using it for thumbprint cookies. So I came back to my apartment with this jar full of brown orange jam, and these are the thumbprint cookies I made today. Yeah, mom, they are OK. The jam tastes only slightly bitter, but it’s not too terrible. But…I can’t help wishing that the jam on top of these cookies was store-bought cherry jam or raspberry jam … Am I a cold-hearted daughter? ;P Categories: Sweets

Super-Runny Marmalade!

Konatsu Marmalade on a Breakfast Biscuit Yep, I did it again, and this time I almost blew it. What did I do? I made konatsu marmalade with my dad’s konatsu oranges again. Last year I had a great success, so this year I wanted to make more and give some to my mom as a belated mother’s day gift. IIRC, last year I used about 200 g of konatsu orange peels, which was apx. 1/5 of the amount mentioned in the original recipe, and I reduced the amount of other ingredients accordingly. This time I used a little more than 500 g! Imagine how long I had to keep slicing the peels… It was almost a nightmare, even with my favorite background music on all the way through. Now I remembered that last year, I kept adding konatsu juice and lemon juice at the end, which probably changed the proportion in the original recipe quite a bit. So this time I decided to follow the proportion more precisely. I put the shredded peels, sugar, konatsu juice and water in a big pot and brought them to a boil, then simmered for about an hour. At that point, the shredded peels didn’t look as soft as I remembered from last year, and the mixture seemed very runny, but I didn’t care, thinking that adding pectin at the end would make everything perfectly fine. Everything seemed fine until I added some pectin…. Still the marmalade was not thickening. I simmered it for another 15 to 20 minutes, and added a little more pectin…. Still no good… I simmered it for another 30 minutes, but still, in the pot, rather stiff peels were simmering in runny orange soup. It did not look set at all! So I added a little more pectin… and tasted the marmalade. OMG!!! IT WAS AWFULLY TERRIBLY EXTREMELY KILLINGLY SWEET!! The tricky part, which I completely forgot this time, was that this pectin I used was pre-mixed with sugar -- yes, the kind you can directly add to the simmering fruit & juice mixture. The pectin mentioned in the original recipe was obviously not the pre-mixed type. So if I was going to use the same amount of pectin mentioned in the recipe or more, I should have reduced the amount of sugar that I added to the mixture beforehand. There I had to choose from 2 alternatives: a) runny marmalade with tolerable sweetness and some flavor of this charming citrus fruit or b) properly set marmalade with intolerable sweetness with no trace of refreshing konatsu flavor. I chose a), thinking that refrigerating would help making it thicker. To me, keeping the refreshing taste of konatsu was more important, after all. So I added more konatsu juice, lemon juice and water until I thought it was finally OK, then canned the super-runny marmalade the same way I did last year. While cooling the hot jars on the kitchen table, I went through the original recipe one more time, and found out what I forgot to do… I forgot to squeeze the water out from the shredded konatsu peels after they were soaked in water for three hours!!! :O Luckily, as I had expected, refrigerating did make the marmalade a bit less runny, and taste-wise it is OK, as far as you don’t mind a little too fibery texture for marmalade. Konatsu Marmalade on Yogurt This is the best way to consume this runny marmalade, I guess. Honestly, this combination is not bad at all. I gave mom 2 small jars of this marmalade when I had lunch with her the day before yesterday, and she hasn’t called me yet to tell me whether she liked it or not. Maybe she is still looking for a politically correct way to express her impression of the marmalade. ;) Categories: Sweets,Bloopers

Persimmon Jam

I wonder how many people in Japan are watching the TV programs on Princess (should I say ex-princess?) Sayako’s wedding at this very moment. I’m really amazed that a Japanese online news site, Mainichi Daily News, already uploaded photos from her wedding which was held just this morning! OK. Call me a lowbrow, but just like numerous obachans throughout this country, I love watching the dresses and foods at imperial ceremonies... Persimmon Jam Well, this post has absolutely nothing to do with the royal (?) wedding. : ) It’s persimmon season now here in Japan, and I made a few jars of jam using persimmons from my dad’s orchard the other day. With some spices (cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon) and lots of lemon juice, the jam turned out pretty good, and I love it with yogurt or cream cheese. The only problem is that the jam doesn’t taste like persimmon almost at all… ;P For me persimmon is a symbol of autumn afternoon. With these persimmons, I tried to take a shot that really reflects the atmosphere of an autumn afternoon... but this photo didn’t turn out the way I wanted. ;P