I love food

I had to laugh when I read this article this morning on the New York Times website:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/science/earth/20trash.html
It's about the growing "fringe" movement of "no waste" - efficient recycling- in the USA.

I laugh because Japan is so far ahead of the US on this matter that after being here for two months, reading this article is sort of like reading "US beginning to widely consider the revolutionary idea of the world as being round!
...
and I hear crickets in the background. lol.

Anyway, that is not really what this post is about! It's about my favorite subject: food!
I haven't shared my cooking with you in a while. Actually, for about a week, I got lazy and didn't cook at all. I've discovered the not-so-secret evil of living alone; while I don't mind, and even enjoy, cooking, and I don't mind doing the dishes, I hate doing both. So, sometimes the prospect of this eats away at my motivation. Pretty typical [of single life], I imagine.

Anyway... on to the food!
This delightful looking stuff was actually an experiment from a month ago:

I know what you're thinking: "Lindsay, that looks like something you scooped out of the bay." Well, you wouldn't be far wrong! It's seaweed, but don't ask me to tell you what kind, cause I have no clue. Hashiba-sensei told me that seaweed is good and can be used to make a green salad of sorts, so I decided to try it.... however, after soaking it in water (it comes dehydrated in small packets), it was soft but so strong I couldnt even cut it with a knife. I gnawed away at some of it for a while... it didn't have a bad taste, but... yeah...

More recently, I made the chicken rolls you see to the left. As usual, I was following a recipe, but it did not work out like it was supposed to... As you can see, my chicken was not quite big enough to fully wrap around the chives and asparagus... however, with some mustard, it tasted simple, but quite good. Maybe I will just skip the rolling next time.

The meal you see to the right, I actually finished eating last week, so it was very recent. Mmmm, this is definitely one of my winning recipes. It was... beef chunks, onions, potatoes, edamame, in garlic in sake, mirin, and soy sauce. I modified the recipe a bit, but it was so good! Yum. The potatoes were actually a gift from Snow.


I don't have a pictures, but last weeend was the first weekend I made pancakes! Yum. They made me nostalgic for the nearly weekly trips that my roommate, Nicole, and I used to take in college to the local diner for pancakes, on the weekend. I miss doing that. One problem though- Japan does not have Aunt Jemima's! I had bought some fake syrup, but it still tasted like maple syrup (yuck) so have to eat them plain.. bleh.

My next experiment was definitely a challenge I set for myself. I wanted to make Ohagi, sticky rice balls coated in red bean paste. I love red bean! I was kind of hoping I could buy the red bean paste already made but... that was a pipe dream. So I made them from scratch! My first attempt, I was trying to follow the recipe pretty closely and.. they didn't really work out the way I wanted. As you may or may not be able to tell from the picture on the left, the paste ended up being lumpy. Also, the recipe didn't say anything about using special rice, so I just used regular Japanese rice... which is WRONG. In addition, it (the red bean) was not sweet enough... I brought some for my closest teachers yesterday, and Hashiba-sensei said that is was good.. but the rice needed work.

So the next night, last night, I took what I had left of the red bean and recooked it, adding water and sugar... and when it was still not smooth enough for me, I chucked it in the blender! What a moment of brilliance that was! The paste was smooth and sweet! Delicious! I even had some mochi gome (sticky rice) left over from my predecessor, so I was able to make the correct kind of rice. Actually, for Ohagi, you don't have to mash the rice, but I thought it tasted better, so I did it. So difficult!! Really exhausting.

To the right you can see the different stages of production: bowl of mashed rice, bowl of red bean paste, spread paste into a circle on Saran wrap with a rice ball in the middle, roll it up, and you have = ohagi.

Really, not cooking for the faint of heart. I only made about 10 balls and I was quite ready to be done. They turned out pretty well though. I brought a few to school again, and actually got a little mini round of applause. lol. I feel bad I didn't bring more for everyone but... it is just too much damn work!

Man, here I am talking about food and I'm starving...
Cheers,

chef Baer