ispahan

I love the internet and social media...

the other day while scrolling through the people I follow on "Tabera", think Instagram for foodies, someone had posted a photo of this...

A Japanese dairy company has made Pierre Hermé's Ispahan in yogurt form!

Rose, raspberry and lychee, all perfectly balanced with the yogurt. The yogurt was kind of watery but I really liked the flavor.

And since the portion was a little bigger than what we normally eat for breakfast, so Satoshi and I shared the cup.

I'm glad I got to try this.

What have you been enjoying for breakfast?

movies

I haven't been to the movies in the States in ages, so I'm not sure if you have this.

In Japan, whenever you order food at the movies it comes on these oblong trays. One side is smaller than the other.

By the way, this large popcorn and two drinks (we bought coffee) were 1000 yen.

Then when you sit in your seat, you put the smaller part of the tray into the cup holder and it holds up the whole tray!

Another thing about movies in Japan is that when you buy your ticket, you reserve your seat.

I like this because you can choose where you want to sit and some theatres have love seat seating so if you go as a couple you can sit together without an arm rest coming between you.

Do your movie theatres have anything interesting?

more from masakichi

I tried several more recipes from Masakichi, this time from her book titled, "Bento no hon" (Bento book).

This chicken recipe is called Buchi-uma chicken. Buchi means "really" in Hiroshima dialect. Uma is a shortened version of umai which means delicious.

So, this is "really delicious chicken"

10 chicken drummettes
2 teaspoons grated ginger
2 teaspoons grated garlic
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup shoyu (soy sauce)
1/4 cup mirin (sweet rice wine)
2 tablespoons sugar

Put your chicken into a pan, making sure that they line-up and don't overlap each other and there isn't too much space between each piece.
Add the next 6 ingredients and put the stove on to medium heat.
When the liquid starts to bubble, put an oshibuta (drop lid) and turn the heat down to medium-low.
Cook for 10 minutes
Turn the chicken over and cook for another 10 minutes.

NOTES: This recipe is easy and delicious, it kind of reminded me of shoyu chicken, a dish we eat in Hawaii.

The next recipe was easy also but needed a bit of tweaking.

Kabocha no kurogoma yogoshi ("dirty" pumpkin)

1/8 kabocha, cleaned and washed
1 tablespoon dashitsuyu*
1 tablespoon sake (rice wine)
1 teaspoon ground black sesame seeds

After cleaning and washing the pumpkin, cut into bite sized pieces
Put into a dish and drizzle the dashitsuyu & sake
Cover tightly with plastic wrap
Zap in the microwave for 1-1.5 minutes, pumpkin should be soft when tested with a chopstick
Toss in ground sesame seeds

NOTES: Dashitsuyu is a blend of fish-seaweed stock, soy sauce and a little sugar, if you can't find dashitsuyu where you are, I would suggest making your own by adding a teaspoon of fish-seaweed stock, a teaspoon of soy sauce and a half teaspoon of sugar. In the directions it didn't mention the plastic wrap, so I ended up zapping it for longer than 1.5 minutes in fact it was almost 2 minutes total.

The last recipe I tried was called Cabbage Oyster-bitashi

Hitashi or in this case bitashi is a style of cooking where you boil the veg and then toss it with a shoyu based sauce.

3 or 4 large cabbage leaves
1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce
1/2 tablespoon shoyu (soy sauce)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
some chili flakes
water to blanche cabbage
white sesame seeds

After washing the cabbage, cut into large bite sized pieces
Mix the next 4 ingredients and set aside
Boil some water
When the water comes to a boil, add the pieces of cabbage and swish around for about a minute
Drain
Add the cabbage to the oyster sauce dressing, toss
Sprinkle with white sesame seeds

NOTES: I would just drizzle some sauce to toss instead of dumping the cabbage into the dressing, it was a bit too much dressing. But taste-wise this was good, I would definitely make this again.

Over all, all the recipes were easy and delicious, I'd make them again.

What's cooking in your kitchen?

p.s. it's pocky day!!

shima no megumi

When I came back to Japan, I saw a small bunch of bananas called "banapple" because the banana was supposed to taste like an apple.

Since I saw this "banapple" at the department store, you can imagine how much they wanted for this.

This got me thinking that apple bananas have got to be out there somewhere in Japan.

You should know that in Hawaii, the apple banana can be found in all of our markets.

In my family, it is the most popular. It is slightly sweet, a little tart, firm and lasts way longer than the "normal" banana.

So, the other day at the supermarket I was checking out the bananas...and came upon this...

　"Shima no megumi" means bounty of the island...since it looked the senorita banana, which we tried previously, I debated about buying the shima no megumi...

I'm glad I did though because this variety is very very close to the apple bananas we get in Hawaii.

Our weather is all funky...sunny one day, rainy the next then super freeze-a the next.

I think we're gonna skip over autumn and go straight into winter, which is kinda sad because I really like autumn...how's the weather where you are?

apple butter

It's Autumn, apples are in season.

So, naturally there are more apple products out there as well. The other day, my Twitter friend, H, sent me a care package! (Thank you!)

It was filled with all sorts of goodies and one that particularly stood out was this...apple butter.

Now, in the States, apple butter has no "butter" in it.

Sadly, I don't recall ever tasting apple butter in the States, though I had heard of it...

Well, in Japan, apple butter actually has butter in it! In fact it is made with sugar, apple, butter and a little salt.

We had this on some scones the other day for breakfast, the butter flavor isn't overpowering instead there is lots of apple flavor.

Thank you H!

stop it

The past couple of weeks, the biggest scandal hit...a couple of well-known hotels in the Kansai area had not used the ingredients in meals that they advertised...for the past 7 years!

It wouldn't be so bad if it had been going on for less than that, but 7 years!

And then everyone in Japan wanted to come clean, from the hotels down to department stores.

The part that upsets me is that whenever we eat out we're trusting that what we are getting and paying for is what was advertised.

The truth though is that if you, yourself are not cooking the dish, how would you know what is going into it?

It is the trust between the consumer that has been broken.

In Japan, they apologize or they "take responsibility" by leaving their job.

Frankly, I think that if you really want to "take responsibility" for something, don't quit.

Hang in there and take your lumps.

Almost all ingredients in Japan have built up their own reputations to become "brand names" for their areas.

And now places that supposedly had "higher quality" lied about what they used and damaged these "brand names", maybe for life.

Back in 2008, I wrote this post.

So, just tell the truth and everything will be just fine.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

oni-sasa

On that show that features local cuisines they recently featured something from Ishigaki island in Okinawa...oni-sasa.

It is the combination of an onigiri and sasami fry (fried chicken breast).

What they do is go to an okazuya and take a plastic bag.

Place the fried chicken breast into the bag.

Place the onigiri of their choice on top.

Drizzle some sauce and then close up the bag.

Then just before eating, they smash and mold the rice and chicken together, creating what they call oni-sasa.

Satoshi and I decided we wanted to try this so we picked up some fried chicken breast.

I cooked some rice and made musubi with some furikake.

And then we put them into a plastic bag, drizzled some tonkatsu sauce and molded them...

This is really good picnic food!

Your hands don't get dirty because "everything is in the bag", so to speak.

I'm making this again the next time we go picnic-ing.