You would think that there should be some signs of spring in March, but it’s snowing again in the Twin Cities.
I wanted to make the sushi look a bit spring-like, so I added a light pink color (from radish) to the rice.
Apparently, the color was too light, and unfortunately it’s hard to see in the pictures…
This (pickled radish), on the other hand, shows a beautiful pink color.
Itadakimasu – Thank you for the meal.
Hot green tea to complete the meal.
This year we picked Spain and Portugal for our vacation.
We visited Barcelona, Malaga, Valencia, and Madrid in Spain, and in Portugal we visited Porto and Lisbon.
It was an amazing experience, and I enjoyed a lot of local foods, but when we got back I knew I wanted a simple Japanese meal like Onigiri and miso soup.
So, that is what I had for lunch today.
The neighbor I talked about in my last post got this jar of onion chutney for us along with all the fabulous homemade food.
He said he tried it himself and liked it so he got one for us, too (he is the best!).
I know this is not the conventional way to use it, but I thought it would make a great garnish for my Onigiri.
Today’s Lunch…
-Onigiri with Onion Chutney
-Sesame Miso Soup
-Radish Sweet Pickles
-Sauteed Bean Sprouts with Japanese Worcestershire /Ketchup Sauce
-Green Tea
Itadakimasu – Thank you for the meal.
The onigiri was so tasty!
The sweet onion chutney went very well with the salted rice.
The miso soup turned out great too.
My little secret it to add a little sugar.
Green tea is the best way to finish a meal like this.
The unique-shaped cup is from https://washoki.jp/ .
This cup is beautiful to look at, but also feels great in my hands.
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Here is another dish I did made a while ago but forgot to post.
I didn’t have all the ingredients needed, but it was the last-minute decision to make this dish, and I was happy with how it turned out even though it was put together only with what I had at hand.
The shrimp I got from Aldi was surprisingly really good.
Today, the last day of 2022, I realized that I still have pictures of dishes I made and wanted to post.
This is one of them.
A lot of vegetables as always.
It was fun to cook this dish, especially with the use of the griddle.
Rice and salmon were added.
We decided to put fish and seafood back into our diet this year, but we make sure they are “wild caught” and never been fed with dye (unfortunately many stores sell dye-fed fish).
Served with sweet miso sauce.
It was delicious!!
It’s been really cold the past few days.
Yesterday it was only 5 F degrees and snowed all day.
So, I stayed home.
Luckily, I had enough food plus some fun ingredients to try.
A friend of mine was recently back in Japan, and she brought some fun gift for me.
I’ve never seen this mini bag of rice.
It’s so cute!
I wanted to try, and I decided to cook it for lunch.
The “Shiso” and Yuzu are from the Kaiseki chef.
He is always so generous and kindly shares Japanese foods that are hard to come by here with me.
The Yuzu zest was added to make pickled radish.
The Yuzu has such a refreshing flavor and takes the pickles to the next level.
It was a one-person lunch yesterday, so this is all I prepared for myself.
Well, that’s pretty much everything I happened to have at hand.
Inside the roll you’ll find Shiso, Yuzu radish pickles, air-fryer crispy tofu, and mashed avocado.
These were super tasty!
Since you don’t have to tightly roll or slice (if you make regular rolls), “temaki” is so easy.
This way you can enjoy the roasted seaweed still crispy this way too because you roll it when you’re ready to eat.
I had a dish of soy sauce ready for dipping, but I didn’t have to use it.
They were delicious without any extra sauce.
By the way, it’s cold again today.
It’s only -7 F degrees onw.
I’m staying at home.
By the way, this is what I’m reading right now.
I liked another book (The Pillars of the Earth) written by this author, so that’s why I decided to try this one.
So far so good.
I have a long way to go.
But time is what I have right now : ) .
Nabe, hot pot, is the ultimate winter comfort food in Japan.
You can add pretty much anything, from meat, fish, seafood, to vegetables.
But these you see here are some of my favorites.
It’s sold as “Tongo” at the local Asian grocery store, but we call it “shungiku”.
It’s one of my favorite things to add to Nabe.
It has a fresh mustard-like flavor, and I absolutely love it.
I’m not a chef, but I do enjoy making these 3-D carrot flowers.
I found them at the Asian grocery store too.
They were not only adorable but also delicious.
We’ve recently started adding fish back into our diet.
It probably consists of 5 % of what we eat.
We really enjoyed this meal.
It’s nice to sit at the dining table and share a meal like this, which Nabe requires you to do.
At the end, you add some kind of carbs, rice, noodles, which is almost obligatory.
The soup is delicious, and the rice (or noodles) soak it up.
Dinner from a weeknight.
Barly and purple rice cooked together.
I tried Kashmiri before, but this was my first time to try this Madras Curry sauce.
This, just like the Kashimiri one, also needed some kind of sweetener.
It’s a bit spicier than Kashimiri, but it was as good.
When I made the lentil balls, I froze some.
They are great to have in the freezer because they are easy to thaw in the microwave, and they can be the main part of your meal.
Cucumber yogurt sauce.
I typically use a mixture of tofu and chickpea flour to make this type of omelette, but I was out of tofu (which is rare!), so chickpea was used as the only major ingredient for this.
The texture is a bit different from that made with an addition of tofu, but I kind of liked it.
The first one didn’t turn out well…
It’s just like pancakes; the second batch is better than the first batch.
The fried parsley rice was wrapped by the thin chickpea omelette, and then it was served with Italian meat sauce.
I thought I put almost too much meat on top, but my husband added probably the same amount on top of it!
I liked the Thai Bowl I had at Forage Kitchen in Wisconsin, and I wanted to create something similar to that.
One of the things I really liked about their bowl was black rice.
So, I went to a local grocery store, Fresh Thyme, to look for it and this is what I found.
It’s sold as “purple” rice, but based on my google research, purple and black rice seem like the same thing.
It was cooked beautifully.
The inspiration for the lentil balls also came from their bow.
Mine turned out really good, and I was happy with the result.
The restaurant had sweet potatoes, but I decided to use my favorite Japanese Satsuma potato.
As indicated in the title, my sauce was not Thai but Indian, and I had a little help for it.
I found these at Aldi, and for this bowl I used the Kashmiri sauce.
It’s really tasty IF you add a little sweetener (I just use sugar).
If you are interested, Kashmiri is tomato-based, and Madras is pepper-based.
Creating this bowl was fun.
I really enjoy a project like this.
Traveling is great because it gives me opportunities to get inspired by something new, mostly food in my case (lol).
When I bought an air fryer, the first thing I wanted to make was this “Kara-age”.
Kara-age is a Japanese-style friend chicken.
Chicken is marinated first, and then coated with thin flour, and deep-fried.
This was one of my favorite things to find in my lunch box.
Of course, now I make this with tofu, but I do a little trick when I make Kara-age.
I first freeze my extra-firm tofu overnight.
And then thaw it, remove all the liquid from the tofu; at this point the tofu has the sponge-like texture, ready to absorb the marinade.
Tear the tofu into bite-sized pieces.
Marinade tofu in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, garlic powder, and ginger powder; you don’t have to wait too long, because the tofu soaks up the marinade quickly.
Coat each piece with flour.
The first time I air-fried it, I didn’t use any oil, and it turned out powdery from the flour (although it tasted good).
So I went ahead and bought this oil sprayer.
This time I sprayed the oil at the bottom and over the tofu.
Ta-da!
It turned out perfect!!
I tried to make this with my convection oven, but I was never able to get the outside this crunchy.
So happy with my air fryer.
I didn’t think much about the size, but this is a great size (7qurart) for our household of two.
Another highlight of this lunch was the rice balls.
I bought these rice seasonings at Mitsuwa when we visited Chicago last weekend.
So I was excited to try this in my rice balls.
The left one is Wakana herb, Japanese plum, Shiso.
The right one is braised Gobo burdock root.
They were both super tasty!
A few other things that were served together…
Miso soup.
Japanese potato salad “sans” mayo.
They usually add some veggies to the potato salad.
I added cucumber, radish, and onion this time (my mother’s potato salad always had carrot, if I remember it right).
I went back and forth, but at the end I decided against mayo this time.
I wanted to keep it light, so I simply seasoned it with salt, pepper, sugar, and white vinegar.
It turned out great!
And no fat!
Here is a super nutritious side dish, braised Hijiki seaweed, lentils, and fried soy curd.
Yep, very Japanese.
I’m super lucky that my American husband enjoys this type of meal as much as I do.
