Round okra?

Saw the word 丸, which means round, on the okra pack...

Looks like the usual okra to me...

Looks like this when sliced

Both Jun n i had them for lunch.

His, in the bento...

Wokfried chicken with gouqi berries, okra and tuna salad, black sesame tamagoyaki.

I had mine, grilled with salt, and with grilled tuna cubes.

Tasted just like the normal okras. Like most okras, which are grown in southern Japan, these were from Okinawa. Got them from the supermarket =)

And introducing another interesting vegetable i got from the farmers mart...
SUUUUUUUUPER LOOOOOOOOOONG long beans. And really skinny too!!!

Tossed them into my bean and tako salad for dinner. Topped with garlic rosemary baked mini potatoes.

And since i was baking potatoes, popped these giant leeks into the oven too.

i love these with whenever i have yakitori! but we didnt have chicken today, so grilled plain, with some nori paste to spread on.

A whole lot of vegetables today again...

with eggplant in simmered in homemade tomato and beef mushroom sauce.

I see no point in buying canned tomatoes since they are so in season now.

with 2 eggplants (sliced)

a handful of mushrooms (any brown kind, used shimji here)

2 medium tomatoes (roughly chopped)

1/2 a large onion (roughly chopped in squares)

50g lean ground beef (marinate with 1t ketchup, salt and pepper)

2T ketchup

1T worchestire sauce

1 cup consomme soup

1t shoyu

1/2T cornstarch

Fry the eggplants in a well heated pan with some olive oil. Dish out and put aside.

Fry onions in some oil till fragrant, add beef & fry till frangrant, add the tomatoes, then the consomme soup.

Put the eggplant back in, add 1T sake, cover and simmer on low heat for 8min.

Add ketchup and worchestire sauce and shoyu, simmer another 2 min.

Stir in cornstarch (predissolved in some water),

top on hot rice and serve with fresh basil.

I know this is the upteenth time we having eggplants this summer, but i really really enjoy eggplants cooked in any way! =)

I was feeling rich with blueberries today...

Bought a whole load of them from the farmers mart...

and used the whole lot of 1 and a half cup of super fresh berries for this cake =P

wholemeal blueberry summer cake

1 large egg (add 1t of vanilla essence)

1/2cup milk

1/2 cup plain yoghurt

3T olive oil

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1T + 1t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 and half cups fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 190deg C.

In a big bowl, whisk the egg, milk, yoghurt and oil together till you get a creamy texture.

Sift the dry ingredients into the bowl, and fold in the blueberries.

Pour into a greased cake tin.

Bake for 30 to 40min.

For a sweeter version, top batter with 3T sugar, 2T chopped walnuts & 1/2t cinammon powder.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first bite reminded me of how i baked my first blueberry muffin with dad.

Using the betty crockers premix, we were supposed to rinse the canned berries before tossing into the batter, but cos we tossed everything in, the muffin turned out blue! >.<

But it was very yummy...

Yeah, my love for baking probably started with dad and the betty crockers we used to buy.

And my interest in cooking healthily probably stemmed from watching mum drenched in perspiration in the kitchen, snipping off the fats from the meats she bought.

Singaporean food is basically very oily, not to mention peranakan food, very rich!

But mum makes everything so lean yet full of flavour, which i grew up getting so addicted to.

Ok, off topic, anyway... presenting the long waited dried sour plums!!!

After 3 days of sunning them, we finally got to taste our own umeboshi.

I had to have more rice today.

Todays dinner was packed with more vegetables again =)

Steamed mini pumpkin with tofu & mushroom sauce, steamed garlic brocolli with small white fish, grilled peppers topped on mashed potato drizzled with balsamic sauce & topped with sunflower seeds.

=) didnt add meat onto our plates today!

Presenting to you... my new friend in the kitchen...

I spotted these beautiful blue and pink dots among the other plants at the farmers market. And on close look, discovered they were blueberries!!! quickly i decided to buy this pot home =)

And...

Look ma!

KANGKONG!!!

I have seen this 空心菜 (kushinna) at the market a couple of times last summer but the first time i am buying this summer. On closer look, the leaves look very like kangkong. And on second thought, hey, isnt kangkong in dialect? so if you read 空心 in cantonese or hokkien or whatever dialect it is supposed to be, isnt this kangkong? i tried this yesterday for lunch and realised it is kangkong!!! then i was so excited i finished the whole lot before taking a photo. So when i found it at the mart again today, grabbed it immediately cos i so wanted J to have a try too!

Stir fried it with some gouqi berries, salt and pepper. mmm... yummy!

Kangkong was available all year to me in Singapore, but i guess we only get it in summer here.

Being a cool vegetable like cucumber & zucchini, we get this in summer. hehe, now i get it.
And we had eggplant with miso curry meat sauce.

I just felt like having curry today but it was so hot, i reckoned we would have a hard time.

So with

150g of ground lean beef

2T finely chopped onions

1t finely chopped garlic

1t finely chopped ginger

1T sake (or white wine)

1T cornstarch

2 eggplants

1/2 T miso

1T curry powder

2t ketchup

1T shoyu

1cup water

A.Mix the beef, onions, garlic and ginger together, then mix the cornstarch in.

B.Slice the eggplant into bitesized pieces.

C.Mix the condiments in a bowl.

Heat some oil in a frying pan, fry A. Set aside in a bowl

Heat some oil in the same pan, fry eggplants till soft, add a dash of white wine, and add meat back into pan.

Pour in C, simmer for 2 minutes.

Voila~

I love my summer vegetables =)

Its back to work today...

After a month of rolled–off–the–truck food, finally something sane enough.

Eggplant gratin was for dinner tonight

and a vegetable noodle galette...

This was really easy. When you have extra ramen(well any kind of noodles. spaghetti, rice noodles, beeoon, etc) and dont know what to do with it, besides tossing into salads, make noodle galette!

I tossed the noodles with lots of chopped carrot leaves, edamame and red pepper bits.

Basically, any vegetable you have in the fridge, just toss it in. Sprinkle some salt and pepper.

Add 2 leveled tablespoons of plain flour (per 100g of noodles), mix well.

Heat a 20cm frypan with some butter or olive oil and pour the ingredients in.

Flatten everything in the pan with a flat ladle. cook for 3min on low to medium heat.

Place a big plate over the pan and turn out the galette.

Fry the other side for 3min again.

Serve with any sauce of your liking. Used tonkatsu sauce for this, but i reckon mayonaise would fo well too. =) have fun~!

Chicken rice

We had friends over for dinner last night... and i decided to make chicken rice =)

Using the pack of Singlong chicken rice mix we bought, i managed the yummy rice quite easily.

Chicken was simple too! Cheated a little with the microwave.

With 2 pie

ces of boneless chicken thighs

rubbed with

1tbs sesame oil

2tbs soya sauce

1tbs sake

2 sprigs of spring onions topped on it

Wrapped, popped in the microwave for 9 min at 600W.

Left it on to stand its own for 5min.

Thickly sliced and topped on rice.

Voila~

And then we tried the new pack of drip coffee from our darlin Ken,

Yea, Ken probably didnt know Suzuki coffee existed.

But ive heard of this 3 yrs ago in stewardess school that we serve this onboard.

So anyway, i had all along thought (ok i think everyone thinks so too), that this is Japanese

coffee.

But lo and behold...

couldnt stop laughing when we saw this.

No wonder Jun hasnt heard of this brand before.

Anyhow, on this hot hot day, since J was on leave, we had our big plate of cold ramen somen (thin ramen style rice noodles) topped with vegetables of the season. Grilled eggplant, edamame and red peppers, some chicken

bits plus a whole lot of our favourite sesame seeds.

and spent the afternoon drying out our ume (sour plums)

This is what we bought last month

Fresh sour plums from Wakayama

Removed the little stems from the top of the plums and rubbed with 400g salt (basically 20% of the weight of the plums. the plums weighed 2kg)

Placed in a clean bucket

And lastly, placed 2kg of bricks on top of them plums

Weight was reduced to 1kg after a week.

Left them alone in a dark corned of the house and jet off to Singapore for a month.

This is what we get after a month...

Plums soaked in its natural acidic juices (called plum vinegar).

In fact, after a week of the bricks weighing down on the plums, this vinegar would have already been expressed out. So basically this salty vinegar was what preserved the plums the whole time it was in the bucket.

In Japan, before the hot hot summer, there will be a rainy season. But to dry out the plums to get umeboshi, you need the hot hot sun right? So when we came back and found the rainy season almost over (it rained a little today), we figured it was a good time to start sunning the plums.

These plums have to be dried for 3 days, but they have to be taken into the house each evening.

Todays the 1st.

So watch out for photos on wednesday =)

Dinner was what we were craving

Salt grilled kamasu, miso soup, steamed pumpkin and WHITE rice

Happy tummies =)

We are back from SINGAPORE!!!

It’s durian season and i managed to satisfy my craving on the last 2 days we were there.

first day, fresh from the husk, the next day, nice and chilled (this is real durian gelato man, since it is creamy and rich enough on its own)!

And after unpacking our stuff yday and cleaning up the place, we fainted in the sofa a bit before catching the awadori along the street outside our place...

Awaodori is traditionally a festival from the Shikoku region. But it seems that this is getting quite common as one of the festivals in Tokyo too.

This is the season when people go out in the streets in their yukatas (summer kimono made with very light cotton) and basically catch on with the beats of the drums and tap their fans to the rhythm of the dancers. Summer is here... really hot, but i see the streets coming alive at night with all these weekend street festivals (we call them natsu matsuri, natsu being summer and matsuri=festival), and i feel my spirits lifting seeing how everyone is enjoying.

Yakisoba (fried noodles, usually done on the hot plate), is commonly sold at the mini stalls set up, like most school funfairs.

the 2 tired but happy fellas

Really knocked out last night after all that fun.

Woke up this AFTERNOON with the hot hot sun shing on our buttocks.

Quickly did my laundry and hurried out to snap a shot of this row of pretty sunflowers that were smiling at me while i was hanging out the clothes.

Lunch, was our favourite cool somen (thin rice noodles) topped with a HUGE serving of sauteed shimeji mushrooms (yes, simple sauteed with bonito and salt, fullstop), yummiliciously sweet tomatoes and asparagus.

I really cant live without the vegetables here. If jun decides to migrate out of japan, i will shoot him.

Makes my day watching these flowers bask in the sun =)