Sweet Seasons / April 2007 - Young Maple Leaves -

Young Maple Leaves I know. I already posted about green maple in July 2006. But it was kanten jelly last year and this time it’s nerikiri, so please forgive me for repeating the similar theme. Maple leaf is my favorite wagashi motif and this one looked too nice to ignore -- I have seen the mold of a single maple leaf many times before, but not the one with two leaves combined together like this. * Wagashi by Nishigawaya Categories: Wagashi

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

Takenoko (Bamboo Shoots) from My Boss

Takenoko Gohan Bento One good thing about working in a small office in a rural town is that you often get rewarded with fresh seafood, fruits or vegetables for your hard work. Well, actually the quality of your work does not really matter. It’s just a temporary food surplus. Almost everyone around you has at least a farmer or a fisherman in his/her relatives, and you often find yourself involved in an endless barter trading among kind-hearted grannies and aunties (and sometimes uncles, too). This time what I got was these two fresh bamboo shoots. I like bamboo shoots, but I have to admit that it’s a pain in the neck to cook fresh ones properly to get rid of the harshness. How to do it? You need to pre-boil them in hot water with a lot of rice bran added. And you need to hurry; the longer you leave them in the sheaths like this, the stronger the harshness will be. If rice bran is not available, you can use rice rinsing water instead. That’s what I did this time. And my mom told me to leave the bamboo shoots in the rice rinsing water overnight after boiling them in it. If it was only my mom who said that, I wouldn’t have believed it, but I found the same advice on the internet, too, so I followed it. But perhaps rice rinsing water is not as effective as rice bran… I didn’t recognize much harshness in takenoko gohan (Japanese pilaf with bamboo shoots), but after eating my takenoko no tosa-ni (bamboo shoots simmered in dashi and extra bonito flakes), I felt strange sensation on my tongue for a while. * Some say that if you boil bamboo shoots long enough and soak them in running water long enough, it is not really necessary to use rice bran or rice-rinsing water. I don't know how true it is, though... Takenoko no Tosa-ni But I really enjoyed the crunchiness of the fresh bamboo shoots. :) Thanks, boss. I guess I'm going to chop up the leftover tosa-ni and use them for another batch of takenoko gohan. Categories: Japanese

Kumquat Marmalade Crumble Muffins

Kumquat Marmalade Crumble Muffins I still have two small jars of kumquat marmalade sitting on the shelf in my kitchen. Since I don’t like it very much on buttered toast, the choices left are using it for drinks or sweets. Yeah, the financier was a great success. But this time I wanted to try something else. So this was the kumquat marmalade version of an “orange marmalade and crumble muffins” recipe that I found on the net. Actually the recipe called for cream cheese and crumbles for the topping. OK. I had some cream cheese left in the fridge. I was so curious about how the toppings would taste with the big kumquat chunks in the muffins. But unfortunately, I didn’t taste cream cheese almost at all. And though the muffins were not bad after all, I have to say that I liked the kumquat marmalade in financier better -- much better. Categories: Sweets

Grapefruit sauce...

I saw that on TV. I mean, the grapefruit sauce. Grapefruit juice, honey, white wine, veg. oil, salt and rosemary ... So I just mixed those ingredients (and even added mustard, too) and poured it over grilled fish. It was... interesting. Categories: Western-inspired

Sweet Seasons / March 2007 - Cherry Blossom -

Cherry Blossom Terribly, TERRIBLY sorry that I didn't post anything for such a long time. Has any of you wondered if I was taken to the hospital? No, no. I'm doing fine. It's just that my mind has been occupied with a big project for the past couple of weeks, and it's going to stay that way for another couple of weeks. Please forgive me. I know. I cheated about the date, but as you know, I need to have a wagashi entry on the last day of every month, so I insist that today is Mar. 31st. Hahaha... Categories: Wagashi

Spaghetti Meatballs

Spaghetti Meatballs It was this post by ting-aling that triggered my craving for this dish. Again, it happened pretty late at night. Maybe I should quit bloghopping at night... but when else? Categories: Western-inspired

Meet the B-day Girl Who Made This Cake

Obachan's home-made B-Day cake. Girl?... Mmmm... Well, never mind. :P No, no. My birthday dinner hasn't started yet. I'm (more precisely, my electric rice cooker is) cooking rice at the moment, and as soon as it's ready, I'm going to make my favorite temari-zushi for this special dinner tonight. Then I'll indulge in the hedonistic pleasure of sushi, sparkling wine and chocolate cake. And before I destroy the temporary beauty of my home-made birthday cake, I've got to share it with the whole world. Again, it's a home-made cake. I baked it myself. This is my very first chocolate cake with chocolate coating, and I even tried tempering! Even though I couldn't slice the cocoa sponge evenly, and tempering without using a cooking thermometer was a ridiculous attempt, and I forgot to remove the chocolate-coated cake from the wire rack before decorating it with all these toppings (the cake was glued to the wire rack with the chocolate), and one end of the ribbon scraped off some cocoa powder from the surface while I was trying to tie it -- I insist that this is a success, BECAUSE IT'S MY B-DAY AND I NEED TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MY ACHIEVEMENT! And honestly, the cocoa sponge, or should I call it chocolate genoise? is E X C E L L E N T. This is the recipe & instruction (in Japanese) by a charisma(?) Japanese wife living in Chicago. Just as so many reviewers have mentioned, I'm so happy that I found this recipe! Yeah, this recipe IS a great B-day present for me, honestly. I'll post a photo of the cross-section of my cake, if I succeed in cutting out a piece gracefully. :) Maybe I am gifted -- not in cooking or baking, but in being able to feel happiness in little things. About US$9 sparkling wine, US$3 small bouquet and home-baked 15 cm chocolate cake with small candles from 1 dollar shop. And emails to me and comments on my blog from my friends all over the world ... These are what I have on my birthday, and they all make me so happy. (Oh, I just realized that I didn't mention the temari-zushi. That's because the sliced fish were leftovers from the previous meal, thus not included in the things I bought specifically for this B-day dinner.) :) But next time I'm going to make a cake with more cream and more fruits. I liked this simple design, but taste-wise, I would love a lot more fruits buried in a thick layer of cream. Oh, and the next time I'm NOT going to sprinkle cocoa powder on the chocolate coating of the birthday cake. When I blew out the candles... Imagine what happened. Categories: Sweets, Japanese, Miscellaneous

My Very First Home-baked Cinnamon Rolls

Cinnamon Rolls Quite honestly, I’m not good at baking bread. The biggest reason is that I’m not patient enough to wait until required “bench time” is over. Yes, I tend to put the dough in the oven too early. But that probably is not the only reason why my bread hardens so quickly. Tell me… can using soy milk in place of milk contribute to this hardening of the bread? This time I used this recipe but substituted milk with soy milk just because I ran out of milk and my craving for cinnamon rolls couldn’t wait until the next day. Yeah, do you know what time I baked these? Around midnight. My craving was that bad (for some reason). So these cinnamon rolls did not turn out as soft as I wanted them to be, and they turned rock hard on the next day. But I can still eat them after microwaving for about 1 – 1.5 minutes, so it wasn’t a total waste, after all. :P I wish I had more confectioner's sugar for a heavier frosting... Dear readers, If you have a recipe for very soft & moist, cinnabon-like cinnamon rolls, please share it with me! Oh, one more thing: If used crisco instead of butter, would it make the rolls softer or prispier? Categories: Sweets

Garden Report - March 2007 -

Gosh, I just found out that the last time I posted about my balcony garden was November 2006! :O Anyway, I remember that my blueberry bush started blooming at the end of March last year. Look how it is doing now. These photos were taken last week. Maybe the unusual warm weather contributed to this early full bloom this year? I wonder if they are going to fruit normally, though. I haven't seen any bees yet... The flowers are oh so lovely! :D He(?) has been in my balcony garden since late February. So this is his gorgeous winter vacation house, maybe? Categories: Garden

Sawachi Festival in Kochi

Gorgeous sawachi dishes on display. Yes, this is the same local event as this one, but more dishes this time. Enjoy! (Click photos to enlarge.) ----- OK, here’s some additional information I found on the net about this event. All these dishes are not fake – they are made with real ingredients. But they are not seasoned at all because they are made for display purpose only, not for eating. Also they are brushed (sprayed?) with some kind of chemical liquid to prevent drying out, so they are not edible. Yeah, in a sense, it’s a big waste. But I would feel sad if they would quit this festival for that reason… This extravagance does cheer us up and attract tourists. Categories: Kochi

Saba No Miso-ni

Saba no miso-ni （Mackerel simmered in miso-based soup?) Sorry. This is the kind of dish I can never post a recipe for. I repeated tasting and adding seasonings many times, and finally had to thin down the soup quite a bit :P Categories: Japanese

Sweet Seasons / February 2007 - Plum blossom -

Many people love plum blossoms here as a messenger that brings a sign of early spring. When we notice the sweet fragrance of the plum blossoms in the crisp and cold air, we know that the winter is almost over. It is a little different this year, though. When we enjoyed the fragrant flowers, it was unbelievably warm – almost as warm as late spring – and now the flowers are gone and it’s getting cold again. Strange weather, indeed. But still, the combination of snow and plum blossoms is a Japanese favorite, which I think is the theme of this wagashi, too. The white bottom probably represents snow. The bottom part looked like milk jelly to me, but to my surprise, it did not taste or smell like milk at all. I also love it that the pink flowers are at the bottom, not on the surface, of the top layer of the jelly.　What a lovely idea. :) Categories: Wagashi

"You Are What You Eat" Meme

Well,　Rosa of Rosa’s Yummy Yums tagged me for “You Are What You Eat” Meme. Gee, this meme must have been around for quite a while. I think I saw this meme on someone's site last year, or even the year before...?? Anyway, ok, here are my answers to the 10 food-related questions. They would probably show the hidden part of obachan's personality? Naw... there's nothing surprising, I guess. 1) If you were stuck on an island and could only eat one cuisine (e.g., French, Italian, etc.) for the rest of your life, what would it be? Why? Japanese. It’s an island, so I assume that I can get plenty of seafood there. Which means I can make sushi. Yeah, how can I live without sushi for the rest of my life??? No way. 2) What is the most unusual food you've eaten? Fish eyes. Well, more precisely, I ate the gelatin-like stuff around the eyeballs. 3) What is the most unusual food you've eaten and liked? The gelatin-like stuff around the fish eyes. I liked it. 4) What foods will you avoid eating (either because of a dietary choice or allergies or just plain don't like)? Insects and worms. Now, I might eat them if I were convinced that they would actually taste good. But right now, I can’t picture myself eating them. 5) Do you cook (and by that, I mean prepare a meal that you'd serve to friends)? No, I wouldn’t want to serve a meal to my friends. That would terminate our friendship. :P 6) If yes, what is your favorite dish to prepare to impress someone? N/A 7) When you go to a restaurant, what's your ordering strategy/preference? I tend to order a combo that allows me to try a little amount of many things for a reasonable price. Oh, BTW, when I eat out with my mom, we often order something different and share it. At a rather formal restaurant, we do that when the waiter/waitress is not around and no one is watching us. :P 8) Have you ever returned a dish or wine to the kitchen at a restaurant? Why? No, not yet. I have never had a bad experience like a fly in the soup or a hair in fried rice or a cockroach in ramen noodles. Lucky me. 9) How many cookbooks do you own? Five. Not many, ha? 10) What is one food that you wouldn't want to live without? Rice. Definitely, rice. I HAVE TO feel the texture of rice on my tongue at least twice or three times a week. (That’s what I found out when I lived in the U.S.) Categories: Miscellaneous

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

Crispy and Creamy Doughnuts

Crispy and Creamy Doughnuts I've never made yeast doughnuts before, but to my surprise, my very first attempt turned out GREAT! :D Though there were a couple of negative reviews, I think this recipe is excellent. Today I didn't glaze them, but next time I'll definitely go for it. Mmmmm.... (The bigger ones in the photo were filled with pastry cream.) Categories: Sweets

Seafood Chirashi-zushi

Seafood Chirashi-zushi Bento No, I didn't make this. This packed sushi was the last one on the shelf at the supermarket, and I grabbed it ASA they put a "20% OFF" sticker on it. :) Categories: Japanese

Cranberry Nut Bread

Cranberry Nut Bread Well, dear readers, I have a confession to make. I no longer work for the kaiseki place. Actually that kaiseki place does not exist any more; they seem to have closed at the end of January. Why do I say they “seem to have closed?” Because I quit that place in the first week of January. And I already knew that they were going to close pretty soon. So there will be no more "kaiseki chronicles" here unless I start working at another kaiseki place. Sorry. Anyway, today I tried out this cranberry nut bread recipe and it was OK. I know. I should have used more cranberries. Look at the photo on the recipe site. Look how berry-full the bread is! Mine is a lot more orangey. ;) Maybe I should name this "Orange bread with cranberry and nuts" Categories: Sweets

Still Experimenting...

Nikujaga (Simmered Meat & Potatoes) I know. You see carrot and onion, too. But even in its Japanese name, only meat and potatoes are mentioned. I was hoping to be able to post "my" nikujaga recipe here this time, but I was not satisfied with the result. Mmmm... more trials and errors... :( Categories: Japanese

Mozzarella Cheese Marinated in Miso

An interesting fusion of Eastern and Western delicacy ;) Good guess, everyone! :D Yep, it's cheese. And it was marinated in something very Japanese. Can you guess what it was? ------ OK. Here's the answer. This is mozzarella cheese marinated in miso. :D Rosa's answer was correct, except that the cheese was not smoked. I accidentally found a Japanese website talking about this interesting idea, and as usual, I couldn't resist the temptation to try it out myself. It didn't sound as strange as the combination of sweet bean paste and raw peach. I've read many times that fermented foods usually make good combinations. But I knew I had to be careful about the miso I use. When I marinated tofu in miso before, it turned out too salty. So this time I blended a little amount of regular miso and bunch of saikyo miso, added mirin and heated it to make marinating paste. This time it turned out a bit too sweet. But I agree with the favorable comments I read about this food. It is a pleasant (well, at least, for Japanese) harmony of salty miso and milky flavor of cheese. Adjusted the saltiness of the miso paste, this will be my favorite appetizer for sake. It's interesting. I don't think cheese is a great appetizer for sake as-is, but if added a little amount of very "Japanese" ingredients -- such as soy sauce, miso, bonito flakes or kelp -- it turns into a nice accompaniment for sake, our traditional liquor made from rice. Well, thanks for participating, everyone! Hope you had fun ;) Categories: Sake