Showing posts with label purin. Show all posts

Back Home, Back to Cooking  

Posted by: anna* in , , , , , ,

Hello again. It´s been a while. Again.
I´ve been away, actually. In Japan. Which is pretty much Shangrila foodwise. At least it was for me. So much good food. I really, really enjoyed my stay. Perfect University (Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku), perfect friends, new and old (thanks and I miss you, you know who you are), perfect life as an exchange student. So carefree.  Everything good except for the kitchen of my floor in the dorm I stayed in. That was ... gross. So gross that I didn`t even want to cook my spaghetti there. So: hardly any cooking for me. Not cool considerung that I had access to a gazillion new things I could have tried out. Funny veggies and funny fruits, strange noodles, fishies I have never seen before or after, great meats (the beef, oh, the beef!)... But, well, can´t help it, right? 
I came back home, reluctantly and very unhappy, in march and of course I cooked. Actually my kitchen was one of very few things I was looking forward to. 
Of course there are other things for me here, now that I´m back. I had to get my job back (successfully achieved, that), I´m gathering books and reading things for my bachelor thesis that I´ll have to start writing soon, I have to start thinking seriously about what I want to do afterwards... Unsurprisingly my thesis will be about food. I will have to read books about japanese food and watch TV shows about it. Inspiration galore!
In the meantime I hope I´ll be able to cook. New stuff. Good stuff.
Here´s some of the stuff I made lately (mostly fails so no recipes):
For Easter I tried some good old yeast... stuff. Traditional german Hefezopf, sweet braided bread. 
It was a drag. First the dough wouldn´t rise. I decided to just ignore that and still get on with what I was doing. I braided it, let it raise (unseccessfully) again, then bake it. And boy did it grow in the oven... Suddely I had this giant... whatever! I was not happy.  Apart from being not the most attractive thing I´ve ever baked it also was kind of dry. Not really bad when it came to the taste but also not very good either. I´ll try again.
Then I made Purin. Japanese style steamed Custard Pudding. I got the recipe from my old japanese teacher (I miss you, Satô Sensei!) and it always worked great. But. While in Japan I kind of got addicted to something called "Morinaga Yaki Purin", baked Purin from the store. It was great so I wanted to try making baked Purin as well.
It tasted great. But looked... Well, you see, Purin has to be as smooth as possible. No bubbles inside allowed. My Purin was all bubbles. I will get this to work (I bought these little purin forms in Japan so I´ll just have to) and once I got it right you´ll get the (really easy) recipe here and tell you all about how to get bubble free Purin.
Last thing: Omlette. There´s bacon and peas in there but no secret. Just eggs, scrambled, salt and pepper. It just looks good, I think.:D
Oh yeah, I bought a camera. First day in Japan, I got to have a new DSLR. So I´ll try to take pretty pictures of food from now on. For those interested: it´s a Nikon D3100.Not very fancy but it does what I want it to. Yay.
Once again I´ll promise to write here more often. I´m aiming at once a week because if that worked out in Japan, it should work out here.
So: See you next week. ^^
Thanks for reading.
a*

2 comments

Chirashi Sushi & Teriyaki Salmon  

Posted by: anna* in , , , , , ,

Yes, I´m still alive. School has been eating me and life is everything but kind in general. Actually I should be sitting somewhere reading and writing stuff for my paper about Taisho Culture, due next week, right now. But I don´t want tooooo....
So I´m telling you about my cooking adventure from last weekend.
I went to my lovely friend Mako and her lovely husband´s place and we cooked tons of extremely yummy japanese food.
Here´s what we made:

Chirashi Sushi. Basically seasoned rice with whatever you want mixed in it. It´s as easy as it is delicious. You cook the rice, then dress is with vineagar and sugar or with readymade Sushi-Seasoning (available at any asian supermarket). We fried two pieces of fresh salmon and then chopped it into smallest pieces, added green onions and peapods.
For the topping we took one egg, scrambled it up, added a tiny bit of salt and sugar and made a very thin omlette. Which, after it colled off, was rolled up and cut into very thin strips. Also on top of tis delicious dish went nori strips. Mako had those readymade at home but since they´re not available over here (why, oh why?)i usually cut my nori at home myself.
And that´s pretty much it. We had way too much and I would have loved to eat the whole bowl.

Next was Teriyaki Salmon. Very easy as well. We took a piece of fresh salmon (with skin) for each of us and fried it. No fat, mind you. Salmon is greasy enough by itself, really. We did use Japanese non-sticky-tinfoil in the pan, though. Something I really need!
After frying the fish until it was crispy from all sides, we poured some Soysauce into the pan, added sugar until it was sweet enough for our tastes (maybe one Tablespoon?), then some water. We should have added some sake as well but I don´t think we did. Did we add Mirin? Not sure, sorry.
Then we put the Salmon into the sauce and let it simmer until the sauce got thick and syrupy. Don´t forget to turn the fish around so that every side gets its share.
What else?
We cooked string beans. And then grinded some roasted sesame in one of those fantastic bowls that I keep forgetting the name of. Suribachi. That´s the name. I love them. I need one!
When the sesame was just a paste I added some misopaste until it was a very light, not too thick sauce. Together with the beans it makes a great salad.





Mako had some selfmade Tofu prepared and we put some green onions and some katsuobushi (bonito flakes) on top. This eaten together with a little bit of soy sauce is gorgeous.









We also had some tiny fishes that noone of us knew before, called smelt. Doesn´t sound too yummy, right? But they are. They´re only about the size of a small hand and very good. We shortly thought about what to do with them and then decided we´d salt some, rub the others with misopaste and just put them in the oven.
Two of them even had eggs inside. Mmmmh. We just put that in the oven as well. It kinda burned but even crispy it was good. A little soysauce and it´s perfect with a sip of Sake.

For dessert I made some purin, japanese custard pudding with caramel sauce. My sensei´s recipe. It´s very easy. I´ll post it here, soon. Unfortunately I tried out new molds to make them and since they were made of some kind of metal I guess I´d better reduce the temperature next time when I steam them. This time I got unwanted bubbles on the edges. But it was still good.



Everything took us about two hours to make and it was so worth it. Everything was very yummy. Very! And since all of it can be eaten cold or lukewarm there´s no need to hurry. I´ll sure cook all of that again, just because it´s tasty and easy and I´m thinking that even for western tastes the Miso-fishies are still good.







眞子、竜さん。超楽しかった! We´ll cook again sometime soon, right?
Now back to reading. And then some writing?
Anyways. I hope I´ll be back soon.

2 comments

The forgotten dessert  

Posted by: anna* in , ,

How could I forget this? Twice!

Of course we also had a delicious dessert. Mango-Pudding. We almost forgot about it on sunday as well. We were already packing up and ready to leave when we remembered the pudding. We took it home.
And maaaan it was gooood!
Recipe is real easy and can be found here. Careful, it´s Japanese.
Wie konnte ich das vergessen? Zweimal!
Natülich hatten wir auch einen köstlichen Nachtisch. Mango Pudding. Wir haben ihn Sonntag auch schon fast vergessen. Wir waren bereits beim zusammenpacken und fast schon aus der Tür als er uns einfiel. Wir haben ihn mit nach Hause genommen.
Und Mann, der war gut!
Das Rezept gibts hier. Vorsicht, Japanisch.

3 comments
Older Posts