Fish and potatoes dinner plates are common on western menus, so when i decided to cook an all time favourite saba miso ni (saba simmered in thick miso broth), added some young potatoes and shiitake too. J was surprised! Only then that i realised potatoes in a fish dish is not common in asia. He was delighted with this combination though =)

There we go, saba and potatoes miso niwith, grilled green peppers and onions with ume(japanese sour plum) cheese topping,

choy sum and sakura prawns light shoyu based soup, and grilled salted cuttlefish to go with our grape cocktail
added yesterday’s bamboo shoot garlic saute to the soup and topped with more fried sakura prawns which made it very appetising.
tastes like the chinese fish soup, and goes very well with rice too.

yup this is how the dried cuttle fish looks like after grilling

again, my jaws were so so tired after chewing on a few, but it made the cocktail extra quenching!@.@

crossing my fingers that this pork influenza monster will dissappear soon.

Laid my hands on very yummy sakura prawns today!

Did a garlic stir fry with the bamboo shoots that i simmered and stocked in my fridge

Wow, the sweetness of both the sakura prawns and bamboo shoots were amazing.

And because we have fresh peas at the local vegseller already, i decided to cook nikujaga (simmered pork and potatoes) and pair it with green peas and egg mixed rice.


together with babystar salad, and yakitori soup (added to some chicken stock the grilled chicken, leeks and shiitake from yesterday, plus some egg white stirred in lastly. nice =))

ahhhhh........... feeling very relaxed since everyone is in a happy golden week mood =)

It is the beginning of golden week!!!

which calls for some beer and yakitori~~~

Home made yakitori sure is less sweet than the one at the yakitori restaurant.

am still trying to perfect the shoyu/mirin ratio and the timing between basting the skewers in sauce while grilling.

Mini izakaya =)

yakitori platter (with grilled shiitake), mini charsiew don, kimchi soup, grilled eggplant in ginger shoyu, and baby star salad.

baby star is a ramen snack that resembles your instant noodles still in its crunchy form.

love it as a salad topping!

and more muffin mornings...

green tea white chocolate chunks with cream cheese filling

ahhhhh... time to kick off our shoes and relax a bit this week =)

I AM CRAVING ANKO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
went to kichijoji in the hope the old traditional taiyaki shop will be open on mondays since the last time i went was a friday and they were closed.
but they were closed today.
on the way home, i thought, hmm i could just settle for the taiyaki near my place, but i forgot they changed their rest day to monday. went to the supermarket and walked around, forgot to buy anpan.
AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

settled for azuki cheese cucumber salad for dinner to satisfy a teeny bit of my craving.

Froze those little beans before i turned the rest into anko (sweet red bean paste) the last time i made oshiruko (thick red bean paste soup dessert)

Dinner

Foil baked cod with enoki, cucumber salad, toasted aburaage, lettuce and tomato soup

Just cod, enoki and umeboshi (japanese plum) made a simple yet wonderfully flavourful dish
Stuffed the aburaage (fried beancurd skin) with leeks mixed with bonito and baked it together in the oven with the fish.

With the rest of the leek, toasted them plain and mixed it with kimchi for an exotic japanese korean fusion appetiser =)

Was a nice sunny day today with a pretty chilly breeze.

wasabi leaves

We were watching a food show on tv one day and found out about the leaves of the wasabi plant, which are usually pickled in shoyu overnight before eating. I tried, but the pickles were really salty, so we decided to chop it into small bits and stuff it in our inari sushi.

Unlike the wasabi root, the leaves are sweet! So they went well with the sushi rice.

Since saturday is bargain day at our local tofu maker, bought a few pieces of this aburaage, simmered them in sweet shoyu dashi, and after stuffing the sushi rice in, pan fried again to lightly brown the surface of the aburaage.

And a small portion of salmon, shiso and cucumber mixed sushi rice.
Turned last nights sukiyaki broth into a light vegetable and tofu soup to go with our japanese cafe style lunch.

And after lazing around the house which was breezy and slightly warm today, made dinner to match with umeshu.

Rosemary roasted chicken topped with miso yolk

Lettuce tossed with sauteed eggplant, cheese and crunchy sakura prawns

Am pleased at how the sauteed eggplant went well with cream cheese bits and sakura prawns.

Simply sauteed in olive oil with onions, eringi mushrooms and sakura prawns, and at the end a dash of white wine, dash of salt and black pepper, they make a good salad filling. Oh and with more sakura prawns on hand, simply dry fried to make them crunchy, adds a good accent to the salad.

Dried cuttlefish grilled and dipped in mayonnaise is supposed to be a good snack for alcohol, but my jaws were so so exhausted after a few pieces, i was happy with just nibbling on my bits of cream cheese to go with the umeshu.

It was a nice and sunny SUNday today =)

Looking forward to golden week!!!

Its been rainin since last night and the 2 tired birds were in bed till 1.30pm!!! Got a fright when i saw the time. Oh well, since we couldnt really go out and play, might as well right? (**sheepish grins***)

Made char siew and steeped the slices of barbequed pork together with half runny hardboiled eggs in the simmering char siew sauce for almost a week, and finally managed to have it topped on ramen today for lunch. ahh... so welcoming on a rainy day.
dinner on this chilly night, was our favourite sukiyaki =)

and sliced cucumbers. But what cheered the both of us up on this rainy day was this heart shaped hole in the cucumber!!! A pleasant surprise ~

Hoping for a warmer day tmr.

Bought a loaf of bread last week and forgot all about it till today!
In the 6 slices loaf, used 3 for bento, and since the bread is already dry and not so soft anymore, decided to flatten it with a rolling pin and...

drizzled with a bit of olive oil, pushed into the muffin tray and baked at 250degC for 10min. Instant pastry shells ready for any pie or quiche filling.
On the other side of the muffin tray, baked 3 mini quiches. Gonna pack them separately for J obento tmr so he can pop the quiche part in the microwave and top them on the crispy shells for lunch.


Dinner sings spring is in the air~...

Multi coloured soboro don

Soboro means crumbled and seasoned meat/fish/egg.

Todays soboro toppings were, saba fish soboro (pan fried then simmered with diced dried shiitake, eringi mushrooms, carrots and onions) and egg soboro, then topped with strips of snow peas, nori and tomatoes.Miso soup was filled with daikon, carrots, shiitake mushroom stalks, bamboo shoots and sakura prawns.

It was bursting with flavour cos besides the flavourful sakura prawns and miso, i added the water for soaking the mushrooms and the broth from simmering yesterdays bamboo shoots. yummy!

Natto tofu with korean style picked shiso leaves (that i made today with garlic shoyu, vinegar and korean chilli flakes. Since only a few hours have passed it is not that pickled yet)

This is one dish that not everyone will like.

First, there is natto, then there is shiso leaves. But i simply love this korean style cold tofu dish.

Egg yolk burried in miso

This was made yesterday by burrying the fresh egg yolk in a sweet miso paste mixed with sake and mirin. Goes well with rice.
I enjoyed making this cos the yolk has a lovely yummilicious looking golden orange sheen. but i just dont take raw egg yolks.

REALLY am enjoying the great abundance of spring vegetables. Almost all our vegetable are from the local vegetable seller which sells only freshly plucked vegetables from the nearby farms. And i must say, they taste different. and LOOK different =)

Am loving the spring air~

What’s this green slimy paste?

Called nori tsukudani, it is nori (seaweed) cooked in shoyu and sweet mirin into a paste form.

and when topped on white rice, you could finish the whole bowl.

Well anyway, we had steamed fish with garlic and dill, bamboo shoots simmered with carrots and tofu salad with hijiki topping.

J bento

Sakura prawns cream croquette, ham and spinach mayo salad, tamagoyaki and the requested white rice.

More sunny days to come! =)

When you put green peppers and eggplants in the shopping basket, first dish one will probably think of cooking is ratatouille?
Eggplants and green peppers were on sale at the supermart, and we have tomatoes and onions at home... but...
i just dont feel like having tomatoes cooked.
Weird, but i have this love hate relationship with tomatoes. Dont like tomato based sauces but I love tomatoes on their own, fresh and sweet. Yeah, so when i have a choice between the red or white sauce at the pasta restaurant, definitely the white.
Well occassionally is ok, but we just had a tomato based squid dish last week isnt it? So, this time... i decided to try making this miso based dish that reminded me of ratatouille when i first had it...

Nasu and piman misoni(eggplant and green peppers miso simmered)

Simply, with 2 medium sized eggplants and 1 japanese green pepper cut into bite sized pieces,

1/2 tablespoon of white miso

1/2 tablespoon of red miso

1 clove of garlic (finely chopped).

First, fry the garlic and vegetables in half 1 tbs of oil in the pan, add a dash of white wine or sake, then the miso melted in 3/4 cup of water. And if you have japanese dashi granules, add 1/2 a tsp of it, if not, replace with 1/2 tsp of shoyu. Cover with a droplid and simmer for 5 min till the broth is reduced to a thick sauce.

Oyako don with bamboo shoots and shiitake added this time


Lettuce tossed with crabmeat and drzziled with hijiki dressing, topped with fried soba snack (aka Japanese muruku =P)

That was dinner tonight.

It was rainiy rainy today, looking forward to a sunny day tmr~

What i did with all the small sardines today?

Turn them all into monsters!

Tempura i meant.

Oh and since i was making tempura, i decided to fry the persimmon leaves too.
Havent had persiommon leaves before and the local vegetable seller was reccomending its amazing antiageing properties and high vitamin C content, so i just had to try.


Main dish was my favourite tofu mentai cheese gratin with mochi topping.
I just cant get enough of this dish. Firstly, tofu in white sauce is adictive. Secondly, mentaiko with cheese is my favourite mentaiko combination. And when i like my mentaiko & cheese combined with mochi or tofu. SO this is the best of two worlds! Plus, when the gratin is topped with mochi and baked in the oven, the mochi is crunchy on the outside, but sticky and chewy inside. Ah...

All our favourites... gratin, mushroom and lettuce salad, tempura. =)

On a lazy sunday after supermarket shopping...

Mentaiko wafu spaghetti

Sakura mochi. (Mochi wrapped red bean paste and cradled in a sakura leaf)

Kashiwa (oak leaf) mochi with miso paste

My first time having this and somehow the miso paste reminds me of the green bean paste angukueh which is one of my favourites too. But this miso paste has a milder taste and i think i prefer this. Or rather, green bean paste should be made less sweet!

Dinner was full course Japanese because i had so much time today at home =)

Grilled sardines, kinpira, chilled komatsuna with sour plum dressing, chawanmushi and miso soup
Called iwashi, they come from the sardine family which has edible bones.

Simply salt grilled.

Bought about 30 of these for only 260yen!!! Quite a steal isnt it?

So fresh that it can be eaten as sashimi, but we prefer it grilled. =P

Gonna look for more sardine recipes to finish up the lot or else each time i open the fridge, i get dozens pairs of eyes staring at me. >.<