notes from my kitchen
What to do if you love white carbs, but still want your food to look interesting? Bread-lovers have rustic multigrain baguettes to scatter across their flour-smudged blue linen tablecloths… but what about rice-lovers?
Enter mixed rice. It’s a lot quicker than homemade sourdough and much more colourful. [Read more…] about rice and corn recipe (corn maze-gohan)
January 2018 is upon us. With the excesses of Christmas behind me, I’m thinking once more about healthy foods. Indeed, the overarching theme for this month so far has been: getting as many nutrients as possible, and getting them piping hot. Two of the healthy Japanese dishes I’ve been eating – clear soup and rice porridge – fit the bill perfectly. So today, I’d like to share some information about these two simple dishes and their roots in Japan’s high and low cuisine.
[Read more…] about healthy Japanese dishes for January 2018: clear soup, rice porridge
The possession of an electronic rice cooker, or suihanki in Japanese, is something to which everyone must aspire. It is said that when a rice cooker not only delivers perfect Japanese rice but also plays a cheery tune when it does so, ultimate satisfaction will ensue. Indeed, I would be a perfectly contented human, were it not for the fact that my own musically-inclined rice cooker is currently consigned to storage. However am I coping? Can Japanese rice be ready without a jingle being played? It’s time to find out.
[Read more…] about how to cook Japanese rice without a rice cooker
The two Chinese characters notionally contained in the word furikake, 振 and 掛, mean ‘shake’ and pour’ respectively. That makes furikake as close a Japanese translation of the word ‘sprinkles’ as I can imagine. No chocolate sprinkles here, however; instead we’re talking about savoury sprinkles for rice.
The nights are drawing in, and since September my menus have been gradually changing to counteract the chillier weather. More and more, I’ve been turning to those knobbly, underground, secretive vegetables – the ones we always abandon around April and rediscover towards Christmas. This time around, I’m also unearthing the meanings behind homely Japanese dishes such as shigure-ni and takikomi-gohan. Also featured in this post is a sweet treat I brought back from Japan to share with you – but don’t worry, it still fits with the root vegetable theme!
As always, read on for more details and cooking tips.
[Read more…] about autumnal eats: shigure-ni, takikomi-gohan and more