Why people should try home cooking Japanese food

[speakerofthedead]

Recepies would be much welcomed.
o.o So nice...

[Risu-chan]

Here's the okonomiyaki recipe:

(This is a rough starter point; adjust the eggs/flour/water until it makes a batter of the consistency you like)

2 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Approx 1 cup dashi (most easily made with 1 cup water and instant dashi sprinkles; you can also use 1 cup vegetable or chicken stock if you can't find dashi)
About as much vegetables and meat as you have batter (between 1 and 2 cups)

Shredded cabbage is the most common vegetable to use; you can also add shredded carrots or chopped mushrooms or whatever. There's a particular cut of pork that's also commonly used, but bacon makes a reasonable substitute. If you want to make it entirely vegetarian, of course, that's easy to do.

Mix all the wet stuff together, then stir in the flour and baking powder. Let it sit for a few minutes while you're chopping up the vegetables and/or meat. (Cut the vegetables and meat pretty small -- shred size is good -- because that makes it easier to eat.)

Stir the vegetables and meat into the batter and cook on medium-low heat on a lightly sesame-oiled griddle or frying pan approximately as though it were a pancake. (It helps to put a blop of okonomiyaki batter on the middle of the griddle and then use the back of the spatula to flatten it out so the middle gets cooked through.)

After you've flipped it the first time, brush the already-cooked side with okonomiyaki sauce while the second side grills.

When the second side is done, put it on a plate and sprinkle with katsuo (bonito flakes = dried fish flakes) and/or ao-nori (green seaweed). Some people put mayonnaise on it too. Personally I don't like mayonnaise on them but que sera...

There are regional variations, of course -- my exchange student from this summer told me about Osaka okonomiyaki vs Hiroshima okonomiyaki. One of them put strips of bacon on the top (before it gets flipped the first time so that it cooks in) and one of them put a pile of yakisoba on the top (also before it gets flipped). Unfortunately I don't recall which is which... ^^;;;

(shh... ducked into office to reprint tape library list I forgot. Let's see how many of the other recipes I can recall off the top of my head...)

<font color="#660033" size="1">[ September 13, 2003 02:42 PM: Message edited by: Risu-chan ]</font>

[Risu-chan]

Recipes from the bento fest:

(In order from left side of picture)

Sesame spinach
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Approx 1 lb fresh spinach (washed thoroughly)

Sesame paste:
3 Tbsp roasted sesame seeds, ground up (mortar and pestle works well for this; could also use a well-cleaned coffee grinder)
2 Tbsp miso
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp dashi granules mixed with enough water to thin it out a little (or else get the type of
miso that has dashi already in it)
Just enough water to make a fairly stiff paste (it'll get soggier when the damp spinach goes in)

Get a big pot of water boiling. While that's going on, mix the sesame paste ingredients together and wash the spinach. Trim the tips off the ends of the spinach (not strictly required, just sometimes they turn funny colors from having been cut).

When the water's boiling, throw the spinach in and boil for just a short time -- until the stalks get soft. (No more than two minutes; can be as little as 30 seconds depending on how young the spinach leaves are.)

Drain the spinach in a drainer and run cold water over it until it's cool enough to handle.

The *official* way of doing this is to separate out each leaf of spinach, line them up, wring them out, and chop into precise little bite-size pieces before scumbling together with the sesame paste. To me, life's too short since it's all going to get squidged together again anyway. So I just take small amounts (no more than 1/4 cup at a time) and squeeze all the water out of that handful and then blop it on the cutting board and chop. It does need to be reasonably well wrung-out or it goes too drippy when you mix it with the paste.

So when you've got your spinach squeezed and chopped, put it in a bowl and add blops of sesame paste and mix through. (The sesame paste recipe is in a convenient quantity for measuring, not necessarily the amount you'll use on a pound of spinach -- I'm pretty sure you won't need to use the whole amount.)

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Umeboshi (the little red things)

I bought these. Shiso-pickled umeboshi. (I like the Shirakiku brand that's dyed with red cabbage, not with the red food dye and MSG. But that's me.) Aside from the fact that they don't grow here, life's also too short to raise your own ume tree to pickle 'em yourself. ^^;;;

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Fried chibi-anchovies

I also bought these. I don't know what their official name is. I have a recipe I want to use to try to make them but since I haven't done it yet I don't have it memorized yet...

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Soy carrots

I cooked the carrots in a sieve in the boiling water for the spinach (lazy woman: doesn't want to wait for 2 different pots to boil), then I splashed some soy sauce over them while they were still hot and stirred it around so they'd soak it up.


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Sweet edamame (you can do this with about any type of bean)

Either drain a can of beans or cook fresh or dried beans until they're just a little underdone.

Measure how much beans you have. Add about half that amount of sugar to a pan, the beans, and enough water to cover them (for reference, try 1 cup beans, 1/2 cup sugar, and approx 1/2 cup water -- my first mistake was that I took literally the recipe's "equal amounts" directions and used 1 cup of each so they turned out kind of soupy).

Simmer the beans and sugar on low heat for about 15-20 minutes (or until everything else is done).

I want to try this with lima beans sometime too...

okay, back to JAC...

[Risu-chan]

Here's what I made last night:

http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~dlstrong/bentodinner.jpg

Technically I should've made tamagoyaki (egg omelet square-shaped) to go with the bento but I ran out of ambition and was pretty hungry by the time I finished with the rest of it...

Here's what I made a couple weeks ago:

http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~dlstrong/okonomiyaki.jpg

And it tastes better than it looks... ^__^

If anyone would be interested in recipes, I can post 'em...

[tenjou_sama]

Risu-chan...can I come live with you?? [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

Yes! Post the recipes! Pretty please ^___^

It looks yummy...now I'm hungry XD

[Risu-chan]

^_^;;;; If you don't mind that there's nothing in central Illinois but corn and soybeans and other allergen-producing materials!

I've got to head out to the anime club now, but I'll try to get recipes up tonight or tomorrow...

[heartberry]

Cool, maybe one day I will try those recipes. I have always wanted to try some Japanese food. The only thing I ever had (and made), was onigiri. Yeah, I know it's not that fabulous. My favourite way to make it is with a tuna filling, and toasted with soy sauce, it's really good that way, at least in my opinion.

[Risu-chan]

but onigiri *are* fabulous! ^__^ Given a choice between making a PBJ sandwich or making a batch of onigiri for lunch, I know which one I prefer...

I semi-specialize in really eccentric onigiri combinations. ^^;;; The red bean paste and tart pie-cherry onigiri sounds really peculiar but was a smash hit at our anime club's last onigiri fest...