breakfast & dinner

Today's breakfast and dinner were "wa", which stands for Japanese. Whenever you go out with friends and they ask you what you want to eat, they'll usually say, "wa, yo, chu". "Wa" is the shortened version of "washoku" and means as I said, Japanese, "Yo" is the shortened version of "yoshoku" and means Western food (Italian, French, etc.) and "chu" is the short version of "chuuka" and stands for Chinese food.

Well, I got this idea from Blue Lotus' post. What she did was open a can of fish and stick in under the broiler. That's what I did this morning for breakfast. One can of iwashi (sardine) (left) seasoned with shoyu (soy sauce) and one can of sanma (pacific saury) kabayaki (right).

Kabayaki is a style of cooking which is usually associated with eel, you may have heard of unagi kabayaki. The eel, in this case, the saury is split and broiled over charcoals and a thick sweetened soy sauce is used to coat the fish/eel, I guess you could say it is a kind of Japanese "barbecue".

I think I could of left it under the broiler a little longer because the iwashi didn't get very brown or crispy, but the sanma had a very nice roasted flavor, next time I'll know better!

I also made some akamiso-shiru (red soy bean paste soup). There are all kinds of miso all over Japan, the key is to find something you like. It is thought that akamiso speeds up metabolism.

Here's the shoga (ginger) that I mis-ordered. It is so sour! I think it was soaked with the ume (pickled plum).

Our rice is one cup of genmai (brown rice) and one cup of white plus a sprinkle of gokokumai (5-grain rice). I usually pour enough gokokumai to cover the bottom of the measuring cup (the one that comes with the rice cooker). After washing the rice, I just add the gokokumai--unwashed.

Some strawberries and sudachi-cha. Sudachi is a type of lime. It is mixed with kombu-cha (kelp tea), kind of an interesting combination of salty and sour.

Since we hardly (didn't) have any veggies with breakfast, I kind of went overboard with them for dinner...

From left to right counter-clockwise: wilted spinach with katsuobushi (shaved dried bonito), kinpira gobo (strips of burdock root and carrots cooked in sesame seed oil, shoyu (soy sauce), mirin (sweet rice wine), sugar and chili pepper), shiokombu (salted and seasoned kelp), ume (pickled plum), konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly seasoned with sesame seed oil, dashi-joyu (soy sauce mixed with stock) and chili pepper), and rice.

Wow, May has flown by and June is just around the corner...