Love this~ x3 <3
I made yakisoumen (stir-fried thin wheat flour noodles) for a quick dinner tonight. Lol, when I say ‘quick,’ I mean it. I’d just gotten in from a run, and I was hungry, so I whipped this up in about twenty minutes.
I’d like to take this opportunity to reveal that I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in my own cooking: when I’m tired and hungry, I blatantly disregard recipes and try to wing it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who does that, but it does have a noticeable effect. For example, when I’m tired, it makes me impatient, and I don’t cook down vegetables enough. I realized I’d made that mistake when it registered that the green peppers tasted bitter.
I was also supposed to add the water I’d boiled the noodles in to the frying pan full of vegetables and simmer everything down together, but I failed to do that, too. I had more reason for that, though, than just the fact that I was tired. For one thing, boiling noodles at the same time as stir-frying vegetables would have required two burners, which I currently don’t have. So I boiled and strained the noodles first and set them to the side. Also, the recipe called for 150 ml of water for boiling the noodles, which came to only about half an inch in the pan and wasn’t anywhere near enough. I added enough water to cover the noodles and then drained the pasta when it was done without thinking about it. The last reason was that the recipe called for chicken stock, which I also don’t have. The closest thing I could substitute with would be udon broth, which could work, but also makes me think that I should try making this with udon and thus turn it into yakiudon.
All in all, this dish felt like it was missing something. I’m sure vegetarianizing it had something to do with that (the original called for ground pork), but it felt somewhat uninspired for other reasons, too. Ah well. Not bad for a quick dinner, but not fantastic, either.
Oh! One thing that was a winner in this was the garlic! I’m not one to add tons of garlic to things, but I’d definitely use more if I made this again! It just seemed to go really well with the noodles. :)
This was my lunch today. On top is the leftover mixed kinpira from dinner last night, along with some carrot matchsticks and some raisins I had on hand.
The bottom is a carrot & sesame brown rice I made by tweaking a couple of different recipes. In the end it felt like something more my own, so I want to keep adjusting it to see if I can’t turn it into something worth sharing.
Kinpira is one of those dishes where the flavors improve after resting, and this one was no exception! The teriyaki sauce I said was a bit too strong yesterday mellowed nicely overnight (the flavor of the chikuwa improved as well), and the burdock, bacon, and chikuwa were nice and crispy after being microwaved. Granted, I think that might be because I had them in there a bit too long (90 seconds in a 730 watt microwave), but they tasted pretty good for being just a little shriveled.
The rice, as I hinted above, is a work in progress. I adapted the first of Makiko Itoh’s two carrot rice recipes, using a grated carrot and cooking on the stovetop instead of cooking with carrot juice in the rice cooker. I went this route mainly because I didn’t have any carrot juice. As the rice was cooking, I also found it a bit too sweet for my liking, so I mixed in some soy sauce, and that helped tremendously. Probably the biggest issue I’ll need to address when I try making this again tomorrow is that the rice turned out really moist, almost the consistency of white sticky rice. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as brown rice is usually very dry, but there was maybe just a little bit too much moisture. I don’t know if I perhaps used too much water, didn’t boil it long enough, used a grated carrot, or some combination of those three variables, but I’m definitely going to make some adjustments for tomorrow’s lunch. :)
This was my dinner tonight! It’s a mixed kinpira (thinly-sliced and sauteed vegetables), made up of burdock root, carrot, green pepper, bacon, and chikuwa (fish cake), simmered in teriyaki sauce and topped with black and white sesame seeds.
I found when I was cooking this that bacon and teriyaki sauce go very well together. The sweetness of the sauce really brought out the flavor of the bacon. :) The sauce by itself was also very flavorful. In fact, I found it to be almost a bit too strong. The recipe only called for half a cup of it, and the instructions said to mix it in a third at a time, only adding more after the previous amount boiled off, but it still managed to overpower the vegetables. For that reason, I’m not sure I agree with the recipe author’s choice in adding extra sesame oil at the end of the cooking process for aroma and topping with sesame seeds, because all of the sesame flavor got engulfed by the teriyaki.
The sauce didn’t manage to overpower the chikuwa, though, which somehow tasted fishier after it had been cooked than when I’d been slicing it raw. I managed to get a big mouthful of it right off the top, and unfortunately I wasn’t as keen on it as I’d hoped I’d be. It did grow on me a bit as I ate it with the other ingredients, but that first bite wasn’t very pleasant.
This dish did provide a nice range of textures: the carrots and green pepper were nice and soft, but the burdock stayed crisp. And while the teriyaki sauce was a bit strong, it was still really delicious. If I were to make this again, I might swap out the chikuwa for onions and some sliced ginger and maybe find a way to lighten up that sauce!
Actually, I just had a thought…I wonder if I could water down the sauce and then use potato starch to make a teriyaki glaze. Hmm~ I might have to experiment.
Expect to see the leftovers in my bento lunch tomorrow! :)
Lunch today~ I had the last of the tofujaga I made on Saturday, and then I made some udon noodle nests to go with it, as I thought that eating rice alongside potatoes might be (for me, at least) too heavy and starchy. I topped both with salt and pepper, which one of my Japanese friends thought was odd. He asked if soy sauce wouldn’t be better, and I explained that I went with salt and pepper for the udon because I thought it would better suit the tofujaga. Plus, after overwhelming the subtly-flavored tofu and potatoes with miso the night before, I didn’t want to do the same with something like soy sauce. I briefly considered topping the udon with some powdered instant udon broth, but I thought that might also be too strong. Plus, the recipe I used called for salt and pepper. :3
Speaking of the recipe, I realized that I messed it up by, um…not looking at it. I thought, “This recipe has two steps! I can’t possibly screw this up!” Well, I went and proved myself wrong. I wasn’t crazy about the udon when I tried it because it was moist and not very pleasant at room temperature, and it wasn’t until after I got home that I actually looked at the recipe and realized I was supposed to pan-fry it after boiling it* and serve it up yakiudon-style. …Yeah, I kind of missed that step. Oops. » *sigh* Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to give it another try sometime.
*Actually, the recipe called for a pack of the pre-cooked, frozen kind of udon noodles, but I find buying the dry kind and boiling them myself to be more economical. That substitution would probably explain why the noodles came out so moist, though. Whoops~
Oh, and I managed to break my camera memory card, so I had no choice but to take today’s lunch picture with my cell phone. 2 megapixels vs. 12.1…^^;
The 名物 of 滋賀県！:D I know this because I know someone from there~ #learnALLthe名物
(Source: omnomnomjapanesefood)
Here’s a picture of what I sometimes have for breakfast—brown rice porridge infused with tea. Up until now, I’d been using a type of tea called genmaicha (玄米茶), and I only recently realized that genmai is ‘brown rice’. So I’ve been boiling brown rice together with…tea that tastes like roasted brown rice. -_-; It’s not been bad—actually I’ve found that it tastes quite nice, but…riceception much? lol So when I went to the store the other day, I made sure to pick up a bag of loose leaf green tea (緑茶), which is what I used in my brown rice this time, and the flavor is quite good! Lol, I can actually detect a flavor difference between the tea and the rice, and having the tea leaves mixed in instead of boiling with tea bags is a nice aesthetic touch. Plus, I’m sure I’m getting a huge antioxidant boost! :)
Made this for lunch today~ It’s some of the leftover nikutofujaga I made yesterday, with some steamed carrots, tofu, and leeks on the side. When I made the tofujaga yesterday, I realized that the package of tofu I had gotten at the grocery store was about to expire. Japanese grocery stores offer discounts on the food that’s approaching its use-by date, so while it’s nice that I saved 30 yen, it also meant that I had to use the rest of the tofu (half the pack) today*. So I searched Cookpad, my favorite (and likely the largest, most comprehensive) online database of Japanese recipes, for something calling for thick fried tofu. And I got tofu, carrots, and green onions microwave-steamed with miso. :)
*The use-by date said 5/27, but Japanese food quality standards are so strict (the occasional report of food still on the shelves a few hours past its supposed expiration date causes a minor scandal over here) that I could probably take that with a grain of salt, but I wasn’t going to take the chance with half a pack of tofu, and decided to just use it.
I figure what’s left of the tofujaga will be fine in my lunch tomorrow, even though I’ll be eating it a whole twelve hours after the expiration date, oh gosh!!
Both of these dishes were really good, and maybe the only thing I would change is that I wouldn’t pair them together. I expected the flavors of the tofujaga to mellow a bit after resting in the fridge overnight, which they did, but unfortunately the miso and the green onions in the carrot dish were strong in comparison, and the tofujaga tasted quite bland next to it. :( So I decided to eat the rest of the tofujaga first and then go back to the steamed carrots and tofu, instead of switching between the two. Other than that, it was tasty!
This is nikujaga (Japanese meat and potatoes) stew, made with atsuage (thick fried tofu) instead of beef, as well as green beans, potatoes, and onions. If anyone’s wondering if I’ve gone vegetarian, the answer is…kind of? When cooking for myself, I think I’m going to stick to vegetarian meals. Not because I have any problem with eating meat, but because my apartment came with the tiniest refrigerator known to mankind. The freezer consists of a tiny shelf in which I can’t lay a large freezer bag flat or even fit in a regular-size Tupperware container. Not only that, but when I do manage to cram something in there, if any part of it is sticking out, it doesn’t freeze.
Because freezing, defrosting, and reheating leftovers is crucial to stretching the food dollar, I don’t want to take a chance of having meat not freeze properly or spoil in my unreliable freezer. That, and I just don’t have the space to store it. With vegetables, I don’t mind so much if they don’t freeze properly or only stay in the fridge, because they can mostly just be reheated, but meat’s something completely different. I just don’t want to take the chance. When I eat out, I eat meat without question, but I’d rather not cook it at home.
PSA aside, back to the food I was originally talking about. Nikujaga is one of those simple, warm comfort foods that takes very little effort and yet tastes so good. I think this might be a dish I introduce to the family once I’m home. Maybe once the weather turns a bit cooler and people have more of an appetite for stews. :)
This is a simple sautée of onion and konnyaku that I made to go with the rice burger. First I caramelized the onions and seasoned them with salt and pepper, then I added the konnyaku and sautéed them both with some soy sauce and red wine. The onions were delicious on their own, and the konnyaku took on the flavors quite nicely. :)