Xochitl10

Miso soup with wakame, chopped up kuruma fu (wheat gluten), and minced green onion Simmered kabocha squash and minced chicken

I think that's part of it. The Japanese tend to engineer the hell out of things, so the instant dashinomoto granules you can get here are far superior to most American bouillon cubes, which is the best equivalent I can think of. Making dashi using konbu and bonito flakes is easy but requires straining, so it's less fiddly to just use the granules. Also, using the granules requires fewer tools and space, which can be important in a kitchen as small as mine. I'm not sure how well dashi keeps, either. It occurs to me that when I was responding to Zora's question about dashi a few weeks ago, I was thinking of very traditional dashi-making. That involves shaving a block of dried bonito with a special blade, rather than just using prepackaged katsuobushi. I make dashi using dashinomoto and bring it to a boil. Then I scoop out some of the water and add it to a smaller bowl with some miso in it to soften the miso into a smooth, liquid paste before dumping it all back in the big pot. My basic drill is to add a small handful of dried wakame (seaweed) after combining everything, let it cook a bit longer until the wakame is quite green, then add some cubed tofu (I prefer firm cotton tofu) and maybe mushrooms. After serving, I usually top it with some sliced green onions. Miso soup is very easy, and endlessly versatile. It's really good with a side of steamed rice for breakfast!

Koiwai Farms plain yogurt and some kind of "Natural Fruit Granola." Really good yogurt, mediocre granola. And coffee.

Shouga-yaki don: pan-fried ginger-glazed pork and shimeji mushrooms over rice, sprinkled with sliced green onions. We drank "Downtown Napoleon" shochu with it.

I've had bear (greasy, fishy-tasting meat ) and jellyfish. Several times at our local Okinawan joint, we've had umi budou, a seaweed from Okinawa that looks like little teeny-tiny green grapes. They release an oceany-tasting, viscous liquid upon chewing. Last night, we had some fantastic grilled pork cartilage.

I haven't seen one yet, but I also haven't specifically looked for one. Mostly, I've seen the plastic lidded buckets and bags of bricklike weights.ETA: Gary, how did your mother make her bran mash?

It depends on how pickled you want them to be. If only lightly, maybe a day, more or less; if you want a more robust pickle, a week or longer. Most of my pickling knowledge comes from Shizuo Tsuji's "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art," which is a great resource to have if you're interested in Japanese food generally. He talks about developing the rice bran mash for pickling by using vegetables you might otherwise discard in the mash for the first week or ten days to introduce the organisms needed for fermentation to occur. Put in some old carrots one day, take them out the next, then introduce some old cucumbers, etc. So, if you were to go the rice bran route, it seems that you'd have to work on the mash for about a week before making "edible" pickles. Rice bran pickles are mighty fine.

Here in Kitakami, oshinko is usually shredded pickled cabbage. According to at least one online dictionary, oshinko can also be a general term for mixed pickles, including daikon.ladi kai lemoni, you can use a mixture of rice bran, water, and a bit of salt to pickle vegetables. It's usually done in a plastic container where vegetables are buried in the bran mixture, covered, the lid weighted down, and the whole thing is stored in a coolish place. One friend does her pickles this way in a fully-packed Tupperware container sans weight. I think Gary's right that just doing it this way won't get you the yellow daikon, though. I'm afraid I have no suggestions about stirring your current pickling liquid, but I'm very curious to hear how the pickles turn out.

Grilled Iwate salmon marinated in soy sauce, sake, mirin, rice vinegar, and ginger Julienned naga-imo (Chinese yam), sprinkled with soy sauce and dried seaweed Sesame walnut rice from the neighbor across the street

Japan also imports matsutake from China. Those were selling for 880 yen (or about $8USD) for two matsutake, each approximately two inches in length.

Sounds wonderful! How did you make your dashi -- fish or vegetable?

Kabocha squash simmered in a water/sugar/soy sauce/mirin simmering stock, topped with just a bit of similarly seasoned ground pork Miso soup with tofu, enoki, and wakame Steamed brown rice topped with some kind of relish given to us by Azami's rice farmer student. I think it may have chili, onions, and seaweed in it, and really need to find out because we're becoming addicted to it.

In Maryland, I would simmer the kernels with sauteed zucchini, chopped green chile, a sprinkling of cheese, and a splash of milk in calabacitas like my grandmother used to make. Here, I stick the whole cob in the fish grill.

Aomori is the prefecture just to the north of Iwate. It is generally very well marbled (so that the meat looks almost translucent if sliced thinly) and quite rich tasting. Cotton tofu (momendofu in Japanese) has a rougher texture than silken tofu, and is a bit firmer. The taste is similar. I do not make my own dashi. I use the instant dashinomoto granules from Ajinomoto. I imagine you'd be able to find it in one of the Japanese or Asian groceries. Dashinomoto is actually quite good, and very convenient. Hardly anyone here makes dashi from scratch anymore.

Possibly, although I won't claim any experience looking for sake on the West Coast. Methinks a lot of the really good stuff never makes it out of the country. Many jizakes, or local sakes, are produced by small breweries that only sell to the local area. Hokushika, in Akita Prefecture, produces some fantastic sakes . . . that I've never seen outside of Akita Prefecture.

Azami did the honors tonight, and quite fabulously too. Niku-dofu: thinly sliced Aomori beef, cotton tofu, enoki mushrooms, and shallot simmered in dashinomoto, sake, soy sauce, and mirin Sesame rice: rice steamed with sesame oil, sake, and sesame seeds Asabiraki "Yumeakari" ("Dream Light") sake

Rice with a couple shiso-flavored umeboshi

Pork, kimchi, and cheese okonomiyaki and a giant bottle of Sapporo Black Label beer. Delicious on a chilly mountain night, but it's too bad the kimchi was bland, bland, bland.

3:1 Old Overholt Manhattan with a dash of bitters Mackerel simmered in dashi stock with miso and ginger Chingen (Shanghai cabbage, like bok choy but smaller) sauteed with sesame oil and red pepper flakes Genmai topped with some kind of a chili relish, both from Azami's rice farmer student

Haagen Dazs Bitter Caramel ice cream. Mmm.

This makes me think of a dish we had last year on vacation: sliced okra, water shield, and slimy mountain mushrooms in soy sauce. I recall being annoyed that I couldn't get any non-viscous food on my birthday. I can't handle lima beans (mealy) or egg yolks in any distinguishable form.

We hosted our first dinner guests last night. I feel kind of weird about making Japanese food for Japanese people, so we had cocktails and Italian-ish instead. 3:1 Tanqueray martinis Nama-hamu (Japanese prosciutto-like ham) with Iwate cantaloupe Penne with Marcella Hazan's tomato and butter sauce, using more tomatoes from the neighbor across the street Iwate spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette and toasted garlic chips Cheesecake

Shouga-yaki: ginger-glazed pan-fried pork. Served with shredded cabbage and sliced green pepper from the neighbor's garden. With it, we drank imo-shochu, sweet potato liquor. Actually, we drank a LOT of imo-shochu.

Word. I love the savory custards, and the beef provided for self-grilling (or shabu-shabu, depending on where you are and time of year) is amazing. Even better if the ryokan has a good local sake on hand to drink with it.

A nice big bowl of hot udon soup topped with bean sprouts, sliced pork, and a generous shaking of seven-spice. Go away, cold!