Fantastic Find! August 3, 2008

Oh, I love IKEA! We just got a shoe cabinet there for our shoes that sit around in front of our back door. Sukkiri shimashita (translation: feels very clean).

Anyway, IKEA has great affordable stuff, but also some great grocery items. They have these awesome thin crunchy cookies that are dipped in semi-sweet chocolate, that comes in a ginormous box of maybe 100 cookies, that I really know I shouldn’t buy… (drool) Or that Lingenberry Juice concentrate and Lingenberry jelly. Well this time, I found something that I’ve actually been wanting. This was not an impulse buy, I actually have seen it in a magazine and really wanted to try it, but I could not find it any where! But now, the fabulous have-it-all IKEA had it.

Kalles

“Kalles: Creamed Smoked Roe” from Switzerland.
Roe is fish eggs, fancy people call it caviar. It’s those tiny little balls that are on top of a California Roll. Japanese people just love roe. It’s a really fancy thing to eat. We put roe on things to make food look festive. Mentaiko is my favorite, walleye pollack roe that has been salted and spiced up with some red pepper. And one of my favorite things to do with this Mentaiko is to make Mentai Spaghetti! It is SO GOOD!!
Back to the Kalles, in a Japanese magazine, this lady who lived in the UK reported about this Kalles, to substitute the Tarako, which is the non spicy version of my favorite Mentaiko. I’m thinking, “I need this magic in a tube! Deliciouse Tarako anytime I want, whenever I want is a beautiful thing!!!” And now I have my magic in a tube, all thanks to the importing of IKEA gourmet grocery’s.

After bringing home my Kalles, I have immediately opened the tube and tried a little. Not exactly what I had in mind… A little more sweet… A bit more smokey… But good! It was one of those, put on your cracker or put on your toast kind of creamy, smokey, and roe-y. I could make my pasta with this!

Here’s my recipe for this Kalles Spaghettini for 2

• 1 tbsp of Kalles, Creamed Smoked Roe
• 80 grams of Spaghettini
• A knob of Butter
• 1/4 tsp Red Chili Pepper Flakes
• 1 knob of garlic minced
• 1 tsp Goma (Toasted Sesame Seeds)
• 1/2 sheet of Nori (Sea Weed) cut into paper shredder thin strips that are about 2 inches long
• 1/2 a pack of Kaiware (Radish Sprouts)
• Salt to taste

Boil the spaghettini in well salted water and drain. This is a very quick cook so the pasta shouldn’t cool.

In a large pan, melt the butter with the red chili pepper flakes and garlic. When you start smelling the garlic, turn off the burner and add the Kalles. Mix swift and well, add the spaghettini and toss with the Goma and sprouts. Salt to taste and serve with the sea weed sprinkled on top. Yummmm.

Good Japanese Food July 11, 2008

Food in Japan is incredible. I’m not just talking about the Japanese food, I’m talking about any kind of food.  You can get Italian food and it tastes better, Chinese food is authentic, even a hamburger tastes better.  How is that? Is it possible that they have better, more fresh, ingredients than what we have here in the U.S.?  That has to be the answer!

I come home from my long, wonderful stay in Japan, and I am not in the slightest mood of getting back in the swing of, having to cook every meal in order to have a decent one, so we get carry out.  It wasn’t bad.  We got my favorite Lebanese food, from the Lebanese (Anita’s) restaurant 2 blocks away from us.  Since you can’t find Lebanese food that easily in Japan, I was craving it!
But the next day I go to our local Japanese market, because of the empty bachelor fridge my husband left for me, it was actually depressing.  There is a limit to what you can buy, since they only import 2 options of one thing, and the look of the fish in the cases not that great.  Is this because we are in the Mid-West and have to have everything shipped frozen, or packed in ice?  Before I left for Japan, this was the most fresh place to buy fish.  Doesn’t look anything like what I had in Japan.  Now it doesn’t seem that great.  My mouth has been spoiled.

Being by the ocean, eating fresh caught fish is like eating something from heaven, compared to the once frozen, possibly was caught last week, kind of fish you can buy here…  I pretended that I didn’t know it wasn’t that fresh, and thought maybe I can trick myself into thinking the Sashimi here would be good, so I got some tuna, some salmon, and some yellow tail to take home to have sushi hand rolls that evening.
I also had to stop at the market for some veggies.  I expect Whole Foods to have the best ingredient I can find, since you dish out a bit more to shop there.  So I’m looking, looking, looking…  It’s summer, where are the fresh good lookin’ veggies?
When you shop for veggies in Japan, the super markets are loaded with great looking veggies that are in season.  When I say good looking, I really mean good looking!  The carrots are all the same size, amazingly orange, the strawberries are all the same size in each packet, and are bright red.  Nothing at all close to being wilted or even bruised!  Almost too good looking that I feel guilty cutting it up to use it.
Then back to my real world in the U.S., where the carrots are mostly crooked and for some reason split down the middle, the banana is either green or bruised, and anything with leaves, you can’t use the first 5 layers because they are crushed.
I know it just sounds like I’m just complaining, and I’m just some kind of Japan lover, WHICH I am…, but it’s true!  You really have to see it to believe it.  Even the meat is so much better!  Beautifully marbled and so fantastic that you don’t have to worry about eating Organic.  They don’t use hormones to grow the cows!!  You can also have pork & chicken rare, and not worry about getting salmonella poisoning.  Now that is amazing.  Even the cheap meat at the supermarket is GOOD!!
Anyway, back to my dinner that night.  Disappointing. My lovely sushi dinner that I expected, turned out that I couldn’t cheat myself.  What am I going to do…

I know what exactly is going to happen.  I am going to be disappointed for a little while, then the whole denial thing kicks into my brain, and things I eat here start tasting better again.  Maybe it’s the same chemical that is dispersed after you give birth, so that you forget about the pain you go through during child birth so that you would actually consider having another child.  OK, maybe I’m exaggerating but I’m still a bit disappointed in what I’m getting…

Next weekend, I am planning on going to the farmers market, hoping for something better.  Also my friend has told me of a local organic farmer that will sell a whole pig for a fantastic price!  She also has mentioned how delicious the eggs are too.  I would love to try some.

So here is my future menu for my organic pig & eggs.

Niku-jaga (Pork and Potato’s)

• Half a pound of pork belly meat cubed. (This is hard to find in regular grocery stores here so having my own pig butchered gives me this opportunity. You can also find pigs belly meat at most Korean or Japanese Markets frozen)
• 1 knob ginger sliced
• 3 Yukon Gold potato’s
• 1 or 2 carrots
• 1 large Vidal Onion sliced
• 1 block of Konnyaku (Konjac)
• 4 hard boiled eggs peeled.
• 4 Tbsp of Sake (cooking rice wine)
• 3 Tbsp Soy Sauce
• 2 Tbsp Mirin (or half honey, half white wine)
• 1/2 to 1 Tbsp of Sugar (depending on how sweet you like it) Start out with 1/2 and add more to taste)

Cut all ingredients into bite size pieces and soak the potatoes in water for about 10 min.  Heat up you Le Creuset pot and melt a small knob of butter. Brown the pork on both sides, add enough water to cover the pork and boil for 10 min.  When done, dump water and rinse off the pork.
Put another small knob of butter in the pot and fry up the ginger on medium low heat until fragrant, about a minute.  Put the carrots, potato’s, in the pot and add the pork, eggs, and Konnyaku on top of that and finally cover with the onions.  In a small bowl add the Sake, Soy Sauce, Mirin, & Sugar and put in microwave for 1 min and dissolve sugar.  Pour sauce over the pot with the pork, cover and simmer on medium low for 15 ~ 20 min. Stir and finish cooking with no lid until all veggies are cooked through.

Enjoy with rice & Miso soup or even Udon Noodles.

26 hours, 1 hour of sleep ~ Part 2 April 21, 2008

4:30 in the morning we are dropped off at the air port with 3 bags to check, 2 carry on bags, 2 personal bags and a stroller. 3 check in bags are on wheels. 1 carry on is on wheels, 1 is a duffel bag, and we had the stroller… Wait a minute. We have 2 adults, and a 2 year old. Who is going to pull the 5 things on wheels and carry the half asleep toddler? We should of listened to Johns friend and got one of those carts to put all the bags.
Oh well, so I push the stroller with the toddler, carrying 1 personal bag, the duffel bag, while pulling the other carry on and John tried to push and pull 3 big bags on rollers. That’s my man. (hee hee hee)
We get to the check in counter. All of our bags check in at under 40 pounds. Oooooh, I’m good…

On to the next hurdle, “Going through Security”.

Take off the shoes, take off the jackets, take out the 2 lap tops and put them on separate trays, fold the stroller down, take out both of the 7.5 by 8 baggies with our 3.4 ounces or less liquids, and the other zip lock bag for the toddler with all of her 2 packs of 8 oz Organic Milk and 1 pack of 8 oz Soy Dream + 2 fruit cups (which may be allowed on board but must be declared to the TSA at the security checkpoint for screening.), have toddler put stuffed animal to be screened as well.
We got our bag on rollers checked because of our camera, but everything else went surprisingly smooth.

Before getting on the flight I get a mocha and a bagel and take my echinacea. The flight from Detroit to Newark was very rocky. I got air sick for the very first time in 31 years of traveling. I’m regretting the Mocha I decided to get before I got on the plane. Thank GOD it was a short flight.

Newark Air Port is HUGE. We got out, started to walk, John calling T-Mobile to tell them to unlock our phones for the ???teen time before we leave the country and end up not having a phone. Yes, they can unlock your phone and you can buy a pre-paid SIM card in the other country and use your PHONE!! (I do recommend you on doing this maybe a month ahead of time to avoid what we went through. We just found out that Japanese cel phones don’t use sim cards though… So can’t use the phone anyway for other countries that do have sim cards.)
Any who, we had to walk a bit and then catch the little People Mover to go to the next terminal, where our plane was taking off from. We had to go through security again. (ugh) This time the TSA stopped me and told me that I couldn’t bring in that much milk. I told him that I knew that you could bring that amount for my Toddler as long as I declared it, do to the information on their web site, he let us go. And he thought I had no clue… (But just in case they give you a hard time, make sure you bring a print out of the airline carry on restrictions so that you have proof.)

It was about 11 am, so we decided to get some subs before we board onto our 13 hour flight. As some of you may know, I thought we were only going to get a lunch on this 13 hour flight so I thought about eating and packing as much food as I can before I got onto this plane… Turns out I was a bit wrong.
During this 13 hour flight we got lunch, a snack of pretzels, dinner, breakfast and even ice cream. I’ve always hated food on the plane, especially the meat and fish are gross! So I called ahead of time and ordered a special needs meal for Zu and myself. We are vegetarian for this flight and Zu, because of her chronic constipation, is Vegan. Our meal turned out to be surprisingly good, but one of the bad things was, is that they only got Zu’s special needs order, and not mine… (sob) That’s okay though, Zu ended up sleeping through the Palak Paneer dinner, which was pretty good, except for the fact that Continental doesn’t know what Vegan means, or they don’t know that Paneer is cheese. And during lunch, she wanted the chicken nugget like patty that was in my Chicken sandwich, that the flight attendant said, “Sorry for not having your Vegetarian meal, but we have chicken or fish, would you like that instead?” Vegetarian…, chicken…? fish…? I had no idea those were vegetables. Well, I went for the, vegetarian meal substitute, Chicken and Zu liked it. Breakfast was a more curry like dish. Zu was sleeping so I ate it for her. Apparently all vegetarians are Indian, or Indian lovers to have some sort of curry in all 3 meals of the day. Oh, did I forget to mention that the veggie burger served for lunch had a hint of curry and coriander to it?

So in honor of my pretty good Vegan (Indian) flight menu, here’s a recipe for the Continental Vegan.

Chicken Tomato Curry:

• 400g of Boneless Skinless Chicken Thigh Meat
• 1 onion
• 1~2 carrots
• 1 can of black beans (drained)
• 1~2 knobs of garlic (minced)
• 1 knob of ginger (grated)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp curry powder
• 1 large can of crushed tomato
• 1 cube of chicken bullon
• 1/4 tsp galam masala (if available)
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp basil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 a lemon
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• a dollop of plain yogurt for garnishment

In a large Le Creuset pot (or large pot with lid), on medium heat, brown the chicken with 1 tbsp of the butter. To the same pan, add the vegetables with the rest of the butter and saute until tender. Add all other ingredients except the yogurt and mix well. Cover and turn heat down to simmer. Cook for about an hour. That’s all! Serve with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream and eat it with your favorite Nan or rice.

Not sleeping yet…

Recipe for Changing Weather April 4, 2008

I have a soar throat. I don’t know if it’s because we are going from upper 20 degrees weather to 50 degree weather, but I have this sucks.
I can take vomiting, sitting on the toilet, running a feaver, or a stuffy nose, but I can’t stand having a soar throat! You can’t swallow anything, talking is painful, and soar throat medicine is probably the worst because it just numbs other parts of your mouth that don’t need the numbing…

So here’s are some recipe’s for my swollen, soar throat.

Seafood Corn Chowder Soup

• 1 or 2 slices of bacon cut into small pieces
• 1 tbsp. Buttery Sticks
• 1 clove of garlic minced
• 1 Yukon Gold potato
• 1 celery stalk
• 1/4 cup carrots
• 1/4 cup yam
• 1/4 cup green pepper
• 1 cup frozen whole corn kernels
• 1 & a 1/2 tbsp. flour
• 2 tsp. vegetable Better Than bouillon
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup organic 2% milk
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp. parsley
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 1/2 cup Kani-Kama (immitation crab) or real crab if you have the money to spend.
• 1 cup of frozen seafood blend. (I get the one from Trader Joe’s that has shrimp, bay scallops, & calamari pieces in it)
• salt & pepper to taste

Brown the bacon pieces in a 4 qt. Le Creuset pot (or any other pot with lid). Dice all the vegetables (not the corn) into small pieces, about 1/4″ cube or less. Add butter into pot, with the vegetables and cook for about 5min. lid closed until vegetables are soft.
Sprinkle flour over vegetables, using a sifter and stirring constantly to coat everything. Add the water, bouillon, cover and cook on low for 10min. stir occasionally. Add the frozen corn, cover and cook for another 5 min. Add milk and cook for another 5 min.
Add Kani Kama and frozen seafood and cook for another 7~10 min. Until seafood is cooked through. That’s it!

You can sprinkle it with some Sharp Cheddar & paprika. Serve with some crunchy bread to those who don’t have a soar throat, and you can have the soup over rice. Japanese style! (We put everything over rice)

So now comes the dessert.
A soothing gelatin treat to satisfy my sweet tooth after dinner.

Milk Kanten (Agar Agar)

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup organic 2% milk
• 1 tbsp organic Fat Free Milk
• 3 tbsp organic cane sugar
• 20 grams of Kantenko (agar agar) about 2~3 tsp’s
• 1 can of sliced mango

Put 1 cup of the water in a sauce pan and sprinkle the Kanten (agar agar) on top. (Do not put it on the burner yet) Let it sit for 5~10 min.
Mean while, dissolve the powdered skim milk in 1 cup of 2% milk and set aside. Turn the burner on medium low and wait until simmer. Stir for 2 min., or until the Kanten has disolved. Add sugar, the skim milk + 2% milk, turn the burner off, and stir.
Line a 6″ by 8″ glass storage container with the well drained mango pieces and pour the liquid milk Kanten over them. Let it sit aside until cool and then put in the fridge until firm. (about 3 hours)

It’s sweet and cold to sooth that soar throat. Yummm!

My Okayu (rice porridge) March 25, 2008

This past weekend, I have gotten the comment, “That’s gross. If that’s what I have to eat, I would never be Japanese!” This is about the Okayu.

The same group of people were also making fun of my Organic Loving, Tree Hugger lifestyle.
So, for those of you living in the woods, who have never learned about Global Warming and is just gaining those tons of pounds from your hormone injected, 3 times faster growing animals. Please stop reading this blog. I don’t think this blog is right for you. You may just want to keep idealizing this and not come back to my page. Oh, and I recommend you to buy this.

Any who, after the venting, I am coming back to introduce to you the delicious recipe of my Brown Rice Okayu.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown rice
• 30 grams soba (buckwheat noodles) – optional
• 8 cups water
• 1 tsp Chinese Dashi (chicken broth)
• 1/8 cup Daikon Radish (or any other radish or carrot) sliced into small bite size pieces. Oh, Nappa cabbage is good too!
• 1 knob about 5 slices of ginger
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• small piece of leftover salmon (optional)
• 5 cm of long onion (garnishment)
• pinch of toasted sesame seeds (garnishment)

Rinse out the rice with water and leave it in a large pot with 6 cups of water (covered) for at least 30 min. (If you don’t have time, just leave it in hot water while boiling the soba) Meanwhile break the Soba noodles into small pieces and boil it in some water (2 of the 8 cups) for 5 min. Drain Soba, and set aside.

(I’m cooking with my 2&3/4qt. Le Creuset pot.)

Put the pot with the rice & water on medium heat and start adding the Dashi, Daikon, Ginger, Salt, and Soy Sauce. (You could add a piece of chicken leg or wing, that’s really good!) When it starts to simmer, cover and turn the heat down to LOW. Cook for about 40 min. Add the Soba, and cook for another 10 min. Turn heat off and let it sit for 15 min. with the lid on.

Garnish with the salmon, thinly sliced long onion and some sesame seeds. Yummm

This recipe is very healthy, great for dieting, and fantastic for your digestion. Make a lot and you can freeze 250 gram portions (160 Kcal) & have it for breakfast every morning!

Or just don’t eat it because you’re afraid to be healthy and turn into someone who is JAPANESE!!