Hi everyone, just back from 2 great weeks in Japan – awesome food, great weather and a truly wonderful holiday.
As you’d expect, food played a big part of the trip, so here’s a glimpse at some of the delicacies we devoured along the way…
Hope you like it…
Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of recipes of late emanating from Cook Japan Towers, we’ve had some technical difficulties with our camera, but a lot of time has been taken up with the launch of our new shop…
Cook Japan is still going from strength to strength and we’ll have lots of new summer recipes for you, plus a food rundown on our trip back to Japan in July, but following interest from customers we have now launched CookwareStyle which is a new online shop dedicated to great kitchen appliances and cookware…
We have an ever expanding range of wonderful appliances, so if you want high quality kitchen appliances and cookware that are great to use and offer bags of style then come and visit us at www.cookwarestyle.com
Our current range of items includes:
We look forward to seeing you at CookwareStyle and will be back with more recipes soon at CookJapan.
Thanks
A portable induction hot plate is a great addition to any kitchen. They are perfect for cooking a variety of Japanese nabe (one pot) dishes, where family and friends sit around the nabe, eating, cooking, talking and having fun.
In Japanese cooking the nabe pot is usually placed in the centre of the tables and shared by family and friends, not only is this considered a very sociable way to eat, but is the reason for the saying Nabe o kakomu (鍋を囲む"sitting around the pot"), implying that sharing nabe will create warm relations between the diners who eat together from the shared pot.
Nabe is a wonderful meal, especially in these cold winter months. Induction heating technology means that cooking with an induction hob is not only energy efficient, but time saving as well with up to 90% more efficiency, 50% energy savings and 30% faster cooking times.
For more information visit: www.cookjapan.co.uk
Frugal freezing February – cheap, hearty warming food is most definitely on the menu this month…
This is a very simple and very tasty dish – and a bit of a recession buster as well. First up we cooked 2 pork fillet in early grey tea for about 45mins to tenderise the meat. The water was then thrown away and the pork went into the rice cooker along with a whole cabbage (chopped) and a rinsed can of baked beans. Rather than buying haricot beans or something similar, rinsing the tomato sauce of a can of baked beans was Mrs Cook Japan’s latest innovation. For added flavour in went some left over stock from the previous days udon, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, salt and pepper, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.
Use the slow cook option on the rice cooker and once the cooking cycle is completed just leave it on keep warm until ready to serve. Alongside some nice jacket potatoes, ‘twas a delight…
…delicious, simple and a joy to eat.
…yeah you read that right, “Burdock Root” (gobo). Do you remember drinking dandelion and burdock as a kid, well this is the root it is made from…
We are really lucky because our friend Ikuko-san has a Japanese vegetable farm in Sussex so we can actually get fresh burdock root from her (by their very nature is a root fresh?). At the top of the picture is kinpira gobo (braised burdock root – the thin one) with renkon (lotus root). Alongside which is some lovely chunks of chicken in a teriyaki sauce and lightly tempura’ed leeks.
Alongside which was the obligatory bowl of Japanese rice…
…and a light miso soup into which a poached egg was inserted – delicious!! I can heartily recommend this combination for any lovers of miso and egg out there…
Eaten and drunk too much over the past couple of weeks? Feeling a bit lardy, lethargic and lumpy? Have a bowl of Nanakusa-gayu (seven herb porridge)…
After indulging too much over ohshogatsu (new year), a long standing tradition in Japan is to eat nanakusa-gayu on 7th January. Not only is it a simple low-calorie food after all that richness over the previous few days, but importantly it is believed to bring longevity and health, and also intended to ward off evil for the coming year.
The tricky bit if you’re not in Japan (where you can actually special packs at this time of year in the supermarket) is how to get the 7 herbs, traditionally (but with local variations):
Your best bet is to therefore replace these greens with whatever locally available green leaf vegetables you can easily get hold of, and more importantly like. So, armed with some lovely fresh greens how do you make this porridge?
Well, first things first, its not porridge in the western rolled oats sense of the world, this is an Asian rice porridge (in Japan referred to as okayu – but not much different from what you would find in China as congee or similar dishes elsewhere throughout SE Asia).
In a rice cooker its an absolute breeze to make…
…wash the rice thoroughly, then put 1 cup of rice into the rice cooker with 7 cups of water, press “Congee” and leave the rice to cook. Probably takes about 40-minutes or so and then it will have a nice porridge consistency (see top photo). At this point ,add your chopped greens and leave it on “Keep Warm” for a few minutes – but not too long as you don’t want everything to wilt too much. Add a little bit of salt and serve…how easy is that!
What is mentaiko I hear you ask? Well, its marinated Pollock roe to the unitiated…
…but this isn’t any mentaiko, its karashi mentaiko or spicy fish eggs!
In case you’re not sure, the mentaiko is the orangey/brown balls on the outside of the fish. Of course the bowl of rice was courtesy of the dear old Cook Japan rice cooker, but what a wonderful combination for a quick easy healthy lunch…
The sardines have been cooked have a sweet soy sauce taste from their own marinade, which combined with the slightly spicy marinated mentaiko is a great fusion of flavour and texture. With a steaming bowl of fresh rice its a real treat along with a piping hot bowl of miso soup and a side of homemade gobo (burdock) salad…
Come on, you didn’t really expect me to allow the leftovers to go to waste did you?
A great end to the first day of the year!
あけましておめでとうございます! Happy New Year!
1st of January can mean only one thing in many Japanese households – osechi. Osechi ryori is the traditional Japanese food eaten on New Years Day dating back centuries, an array of delicate dishes presented in lacquered boxes. This year we didn’t get back to Japan so made it at home (check the bottom of the post for last years photos from Japan).
In addition to the traditional 3 jubako (lacquer boxes) we indulged in some homemade sushi and got some chu-toro (tuna belly) for sashimi…
…while not quite up to the standards of a master in Japan, this was really nice sushi (squid, octopus, prawn and saltwater eel)…
The jubako roughly followed the Japanese traditional one one being seafood, one from the land and one from the earth...
I couldn’t resist this little photo of one of the Cook Japan kids fave osechi dishes – ebi prawn) tempura on one of our “only to be used on New Years Day plates”…
Osechi wou;dn’t be osechi though without also having a bowl of ozoni – soup with “mochi” (steamed rice pounded into a sticky/elasticy rice cake) inside…but its not for the faint hearted! Each year there are a few small deaths recorded from people choking on mochi!"
So that was our attempt at making osechi and it was a wonderful meal and perfect way to start what will hopefully be a good 2010. Last year, we were back in Japan and this is the magnificent food Mrs Cook Japan’s mum rustled up…a true master of the kitchen!!!
…and yes, it did taste as amazing as it looked!
So with the osechi devoured, there’s only one thing left for me to do…relax and enjoy hatsuburo (the first bath of the year). Oh, and the kids will be expecting otoshidama – the traditional Japanese gift of money on New Years Day!
Happy New Year everyone…and don’t forget the Cook Japan shop is running a 10% discount on all stock through January.
