signs

Sometimes walking around Japan, you just have to laugh at some of their signs. I sometimes wonder where they are looking up the meanings to some of the words or phrases that they use. There are also signs with major spelling errors which I can't believe people actually paid someone for!

Like the car dealership that was in our neighborhood called "Risky". They were selling high-end cars like Mercedes & BMW's...When I first laughed at this sign, Satoshi couldn't understand why. He then looked up the meaning and understood...they eventually went out of business..I thought they were a little suspicious, don't you??

While walking around Kyoto last week, I found these signs. SNOB corporation, after googling, I found out that they are a hair salon. With haircuts starting at $60 (the average price here is $30) and coloring touch ups at $80 (the average price for a touch-up here $40) and to have them style your hair after a cut at $15, you too can become a hair snob...where is Fantastic Sam's or Supercuts when you need one?

Another one was Bruce-Pee, I would be a bit cautious about buying clothes from a place that has pee in their name, wouldn't you? Plus, on the second level there is the Ill Store (I googled and found out that ill is the slang for "good")...although you may become ill from the pee clothes...

And as if everything isn't expensive already, the price of some everyday items went up 6-10% on June 1st here in Japan. Here is a list of what they mentioned...TP (toilet paper), tissue (hmm, I wonder if this will put a stop to the free ones?), coffee, dry cleaning and mayonnaise. Part of the reason is the rising fuel costs and also the popularity of biofuels. As of today, they have just added corn and soy beans to the list, soon we won't have anything to eat!

tea party

Today I was fortunate to be able to tag-along with Kazumi to a tea party at Mrs. Kusakabe's home (her cooking teacher). Her home is in the mountains of Ashiya, a quiet but ritzy neighborhood.

The menu was pot-luck and boy, there was a LOT of food! Here are a couple of shots of the entree table.

And a shot of the dessert table.

This sushi topped with edible flowers was so pretty and delicious!

Mrs. Kusakabe's home is so beautiful with a lovely yard and many rose bushes. The rose fragrance wafted with the breeze.

It was a very lovely day. (Thank you Kazumi & Mrs. Kusakabe!)

are you on the blogroll?

Jenn of Leftover Queen has a blogroll going for foodies which I found out from Darla's blog, Messy Cucina. Jenn also informed me that I was the 100th member and that she will start a forum. If you haven't joined yet, please do so, it is a great way to get your blog out there! Just follow her directions in her post. Hope to see you there!

myogazushi

My student and friend Kazumi loves to cook, so she is always sharing new food ideas and recipes with me at our lessons. At a lesson last week, she gave me some pickled ginger, pickled myoga and a recipe for myogazushi (ginger shoot sushi). She said that her family eats this dish in the summertime because it is so refreshing.

Myoga is a type of ginger and I think it may be the shoots of the ginger. In Hawaii, the only time our family ate myoga was for special occasions. It was served raw and usually accompanied cooked tako(octopus) and a miso (soy bean paste)sauce as a pupu (appetizer).

Since Kazumi gave me all of the pickled items (photo of the pickled myoga), all I had to do was cook the rice and edamame, then assemble the sushi.

Shinshoga no Amazuzuke(Pickled Spring Ginger)
600-800g shinshoga (spring ginger)
150g sugar
20g salt
2 cups vinegar

1. Wash the ginger and wipe dry.
2. In a bottle, put the ginger. Heat the other ingredients and cool.
3. Pour over the ginger and store in the refridge.

Myogazushi (Ginger shoot sushi)
3 cups rice
3 cups water
2 tablespoons sake (rice wine)
60g myoga (ginger shoots)
60g shinshoga amazuzuke (pickled spring ginger)
1/4 cup edamame (soy beans), cooked and shelled
1/2 cup vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
kelp

1. Put the vinegar, sugar & salt together, set aside.
2. After blanching the myoga, place into the mixture in #1.
3. Cut the pickled spring ginger into 2 cm slices
4. 1 hour before cooking the rice, wash it and drain well. Put some konbu (kelp) into 3 cups of water to make "kelp water". *leave the kelp in for about 30 minutes. Add the kelp water to the washed rice and add the sake. Let the rice soak in the kelp water and sake for about 30 minutes. Cook the rice in this water mixture.
5. Take the myoga out from mixture #1 and slice thinly, save this mixture.
6. After the rice is cooked, lay the rice out into a hangiri (bamboo tub) or anything that can spread the rice out flat to cool a bit.
7. Use 80cc of mixture #1 and sprinkle onto the rice while fanning with an uchiwa (hand-held fan) and fluffing the rice with a shamoji (rice paddle).*it helps if you have a helper fan while you fluff, if not, just take turns at fanning and fluffing.
8. After the rice is seasoned, add the sliced ginger and mix well. Top with sliced myoga and edamame.
9. Enjoy!

NOTES: I didn't have konbu, so I used wakame. I think the flavor is similar but not as strong as konbu. This dish was very sappari (a term we use when describing food or action meaning refreshing), the sourness from the pickled items matched nicely with the seasoned rice. I served it with some grilled salmon and veggies. (Thanks Kazumi!)

Have a nice week!

madeleine failure

Note to self: do not bake when you have not had much sleep. I woke up this morning at 5:55 (yes, it is Sunday), Satoshi had to go to work and meet a client at 8:30. Since he was leaving the house at 6:30, I wanted to send him off with a musubi(rice ball) for breakfast.

So, after he left, I did a little stretching and then had my breakfast. Since I was up and it was only 7:00, I decided to bake.

I found a recipe in a Japanese book for madeleines, while reading the recipe I didn't know if it made 6 large ones OR 18 small ones or 6 large ones AND 18 small ones. It was neither.

I overfilled the large pan, so there wasn't much batter left for the small ones. Plus, I counted the grooves in my small pan and there were only 15. I guess I could blame it on the recipe, as it didn't say how much to fill each groove, but as I was filling the pan, something in the back of my head was telling me, "only half or three-fourths is good", which obviously I didn't listen to because I filled them up to the top.

Anyway, when you overfill your pan, this is what happens. The batter bonds with its neighboring madeleine and then you can't get them to separate from the pan or each other--I had to take a butter knife to these.

This is actually my second attempt at making madeleines, the first one was also a failure.

Still, the texture of the madeleine was nice--moist and not dense...sigh...unless you don't mind eating ugly madeleines, please don't come over for tea.

Have a nice week!

hana shobu

We have a park nearby called Suigetsu Park which we have visited in the Spring and Summer and I have posted about before. Spring showcases the ume and momo (plum and peach )trees. As Spring turns to Summer, you can see the fruits begin to ripen on the trees.

The beginning of Summer also brings the hana shobu, a type of iris.

I love the these fragile flowers.

The beginning of Summer also brings Satoshi's birthday. This year he has to work on his birthday. I bought us some dessert from a shop in our arcade called Mior. I bought a Chocolat for Satoshi and Tiramisu for myself.

Here's the birthday boy, he looks a bit run down since he's been working late and also been going drinking with friends and co-workers.

foodie thursday & friday

My Aunty emailed me today to tell me that I must be slipping because there isn't anything new on my blog...as she would say, "hold your horses, will ya?"

Anyway,yesterday Satoshi was off, but had to go to a funeral, so I had dinner by myself--Some chicken wings which I bought at our shopping arcade, delicious asparagus, leftover carrot salad, several olives with feta cheese and corn..oh, and a dark beer. But, I was a bit disappointed by this corn.

When I bought it, it looked really fresh and sweet (look how big it is too about 10 inches long, they even had it packaged to show off the nice, plump kernels), but after steaming it, it wasn't sweet at all. I think it may be a bit too early for corn here. (I wonder if it was the area that it was grown in? I usually buy Hokkaido (Northern Japan) corn, but this one was from Kumamoto (Southern Japan).)

This morning, I went chocolate shopping in Kyoto. After finishing "The Chocolate Connoisseur", I realized that a LOT of the chocolates I've been eating were not in the author's eyes "true chocolate". And that a lot of chocolate that say 70%, sometimes have other "not so good" ingredients in them, just to make a sale. So, I went to seek out some of the recommended tastings that were listed in the book. I hope to learn more about tasting so that I can be a bit more descriptive than just saying something was "good" or "delicious".

Whenever I go to Kyoto, one of the places I sometimes walk through is Nishiki Market (I don't always go because this place can be at times really chaotic!). This place is the best place to find fresh foods and veggies and they give LOTS of samples! After seeing HwnPake's post on tsukudani, I decided to pick some up. Tsukudani is anything that is preserved by boiling in shoyu (soy sauce) and sugar. I bought two types.

Kurumi-chirimen (walnut-whitebait)--this one is on the sweet side, plus the walnuts give it a nice crunch.

Chirimen sansho (whitebait-Japanese pepper)--this one is more on the salty side and the sansho gives it a nice zing.

I also picked up some tonyu (soy milk) donuts. I only wanted one, but they only sold them in tens...I gave half away to my friend Kazumi at our lesson this afternoon. These donuts are really light and fluffy.

Lunch was at Mlesna Tea House. They are apparently a Sri Lanka tea company and have a tea house in Kyoto. I had their vegetable curry set, which came with a salad, choice of hot or iced tea and petit four (the little plate with a cookie, meringue & chocolate covered almond). The iced tea was an apple flavored tea and was great without any gum syrup in it. Unfortunately, I was facing the kitchen and saw the guy open a package of pre-made curry and add in the veggies....

Tonight, Satoshi has a party to welcome new staff, so I'm alone for dinner again. I bought some fried aji(horse mackerel) with veggies and a sweet and spicy sauce. I ate up the rest of the carrot salad and leftover asparagus.

Hope you have a nice weekend....enjoy the post Aunty!