Chirimenjako and Rice

One other thing the recent care package contained was a huge bag of chirimenjako which are just perfect as a topping for a bowl of nice hot rice…

 

Chirimenjako are not strictly a variety of fish, but more a generic name for very small fish like baby sardines or anchovies that are simmered in saltwater, then dried in the sun.  This particular batch had also then be covered in a nice sweet marinade – a kind of crispy soy and sugar glaze really.

Really tasty, and more than likely quite good for you as well…

Yakisoba

The care package from Japan also had some really good noodles in it, so for tea we had yakisoba (fried noodles).  Essentially it’s stir fried noodles with bite sized pieces of pork, vegetables, sometimes seafood, and then flavoured with yakisoba sauce and a bit of seasoning. 

This is such an easy dish to prepare, just get yourself some good noodles (the better the noodles, the better the dish) and everything else is the type of stuff you probably always have around the house.  The one thing you might not have is yakisoba sauce, although lots of asian supermarkets stock it nowadays.  The other option is to make your own – try blending some oyster sauce, soy sauce, mirin, honey and a bit of sugar…

A very similar dish that is also great to try is yakiudon, where you simply replace the thin ramen-style noodles with the much thicker udon variety, both are extremely tasty and easy to cook.  We make yakisoba a lot at home, but this dish with very good quality noodles was an absolute delight…

Buta-man and Hotate-man (Pork & Scallop Buns)

A care-package arrived from Japan this morning full of delights, two of which were Buta-man (Pork Buns) and Hotate-man (Scallop Buns).

Buta-man is Japanese food made from flour dough, and filled with cooked ground pork or other ingredients. Across Japan they tend to be referred to as nikuman (meat buns), the term Buta-man is more common in the Kansai region.  They are similar to the Chinese baozi.

The Hotate-man is a speciality from Hokkaido, this was the first time I’d tried it and as you can see its a very tasty little fella…

 

The buta-man has a fabulous minced pork filling and is a great snack food – many convenience stores sell these plus other fillings like curry, pizza and custard.  Its great to be able to eat them here in England, only draw back is when food is this good they don’t last very long in the Cook Japan household…

Mabo Dofu with a twist…

…well i say its a twist, but actually its just a sweet romano pepper, although having said that some do have a kind of twisty shape to them (not convincing ground i know but hey…)  Oh, and a few lily flowers so i guess that’s not to common so counts as kind of twisted…anyway, enough about food contortions its extremely tasty…

Mabo Dofu is a very popular Chinese dish cooked in Japan – originally from the Szechuan province of China, the Japanese equivalent lacks some of the spice, heat and thick sauce of the Chinese dish, but still provides plenty of flavour,  In essence its a dish of tofu, chilli and minced meat (typically pork or beef).

This is one of my favourite dishes and has become a traditional on my birthday – today’s variation had some finely chopped cabbage, rehydrated lily flowers and sweet peppers thrown in for added flavour along with the meat/tofu staple ingredients.  The Japanese version tends to use miso paste rather than chilli paste, but either way its incredibly delicious served on a bed of rice (come on you didn’t really think I’d go through an entire blog without mentioning the wonders of our Cook Japan rice cooker did you?)….

 

Steaming hot bowl of noodles

I could wax lyrical about this, but as they say “a picture is worth a thousands words” (not that there is any danger of me writing that much”, but perhaps this is one of the dishes to just look at without my incoherent ramblings…

Oh, go on then…just a few apt sentences then.

Homemade soup stock using very good quality dashi sent from Japan, ramen noodles, some chicken, a bunch of dumplings from our local Chinese supermarket and then topped with homemade pickled spring onions…

…delicious – wonderful on a cold day like today!

Playing with my new Teppanyaki Grill

What a brilliant purchase, a nice new Teppanyaki Grill…
…anticipation in the house was at fever pitch waiting – vegetables were bought, steak marinated, squid cleaned, tofu diced, noodles cooked and homemade yakiniku sauce wonderfully made by Mrs Cook Japan (with grated apple as a zany, but magnificent secret ingredient).
A teppan is an iron griddle used to cook food, essentially frying it, hence teppanyaki…

So with ingredients ready to go, there was only one thing left to do – heat up the baby and start cooking…
…getting started…

…nearly ready…

… yummy!
Who needs sunshine and fine weather when you can bbq in the warmth and safety of your home on a cold winters evening?!?!
For more information visit: www.cookjapan.co.uk

Kind of like dry-curry (and a bit like kedgeree), but also a bit like neither…

…you know how some days there’s nothing really in the fridge, freezer or cupboards from which to concoct dinner?  Well that’s where this came from and thankfully was jolly tasty as well.

As you would expect, and know by now, there was the typical abundance of rice to be found in the cupboards.   It wasn’t to difficult to find an onion, couple of beans and lentils, eggs and the random element in the dish, a frozen “chip shop” battered cod piece from the dark recesses of the freezer.  As for seasoning, curry powder, cumin and some of the usual suspects from the spice rack were roped in for the task as well.

So the idea was something like a Japanese dry curry (basically a kind of curry-flavoured fried rice) and a bit like kedgeree. 

Onions were fried, battered cod went in the oven and then was chopped up, and while all this was going on the trusty Cook Japan rice cooker was busy cooking up some rice with beans and lentils.  Once the rice was cooked, in went the onions, fish pieces and some seasoning and the whole thing mixed up and left on “keep warm” until it was time for dinner…

 

…so as you can see its a bit like a dry curry and kind of like kedgeree, in fact a pretty good random combination that worked out really tasty, full of flavour and a great way to use up a bunch of bits and bods to make dinner…

…ooh, then I thought “i know”, and cooked up a nice hard boiled egg to give it a bit more of a kedgeree feel (well kind of, if you don’t look to closely)…