Washism

Made sesame karaage (fried chicken) for bennto today.

Its been a long long time since i made this

and since this was done in the oven, i could make it in the morning without my hair and clothes reeking of oil.

OVEN???

Yes, this is how the modern microwave ovens are like these days.

Making use of steam, microwave and convectional oven altogether at the same time to create the fried surface of the flour coated chicken bits, you save oil and the mess from deep frying.

Tonights dinner had my favourite purple rice...

Eggplant!

is the name of this dish.

Basically, grilled eggplants topped on purple rice.

The reason why the eggplants are not puple is because i stripped their skins.

And to make up for the lack of colour, i mixed a tablespoon of wild black rice into regular rice to create the purple hue.

Grilled eggplants

3 eggplants

boiled shirasu

ground ginger

myoga

shoyu

Grill eggplants in the oven at 220deg for 15 min.

Steep them in ice water, then strip skins right away.

chop up the eggplants, toss with salt pepper, some shoyu & the white bait.

top with chopped myoga(presoaked in water).

Another experiment today, was... pumpkin tofu...

Homemade pumpkin tofu topped with steamed pumpkin paste.

Made with soymilk and nigari (a salt solution) and pumpkin paste stirred in, we had pumpkin tofu!

Nigari, i checked, is called, bittern in English, but i havent seen this outside Japan before.

It is so convenient to have this at home so tofu can be made anytime with soymilk.

It was soooooooooo hot today, taking a bath was like going for a sauna session since the perspiration soaks through the clothes right after stepping out of the bath.