May 25th Japanese Cooking

It was cooler outside today, the last few days have been increasingly warmer and more humid. Today was overcast though with a cooler breeze, I think we may get some rain later. I think we're getting ready to head into rainy season soon.
  Japan is a country of many types of vinegars, soy sauces and stuff. It's very difficult going into the stores and trying to buy the right ingredient. I am getting better at it though as my understanding of hiragana improves. I can sometimes sound out the words on the bottles if they write it in hiragana. Most often it's a mixure of hiragana, katakana and kanji but I sound out the part I can get and sometimes it works...pretty much! lol Today, I needed to find some rice wine vinegar. I recognized the shoyu, mirin and sake but couldn't figure out the vinegar so I did what the ladies at the grocery are becoming accustomed to... I went asking! A lady that was stocking the veggies came with me and helped me out, fortunately she understood the word rice vinegar. She said A BUNCH of stuff to me that I didn't understand but we both smiled a lot and got the job done!
When I went to the library the other day I picked up a couple of Japanese cookbooks. I decided to try out some of the recipes. Finding ingredients for Mexican food is very difficult and while I can make American stuff sometimes, it can be cost prohibitive, so I'm trying to figure out more Japanese dishes - besides we like it! First I tried the marinated mushroom recipe. This is dehydrated shitake mushrooms that are simmered in a soy sauce based  marinade. It is a good side dish to eat with rice, or it can be used in some salads or even stuffed. They turned out good!

 

Next I made some tsukemono, which is just pickled vegetables to eat with rice. I made some with  cucumber and carrot. After they were salted Gary added some rice vinegar  and they were very nice to eat with the rice.

 

 

A small batch goes a long way so we have leftovers of both the mushrooms and tsukemono for other meals.

 

After that, I saw a recipe of eggplant with miso so I decided to try that one as well. This recipe is often used as a filling for a type of dumpling but the book said it was also good as a side with rice so I made it to go with our rice. This one was a sweet base with sugar being mixed in with the miso.  It made a nice flavor change to eat a little on the side every few bites or so. It doesn't look like much but it is tasty. The two small eggplants made quite a bit though so I divided it up and froze the leftovers into three small batches.

 

Once the sides were done I needed to make the main dishes. I made a sesame beef dish. This was a cheat as I used a marinade packet I found at the store, it was quite good though and easy! Gary loved it!

 

 

I also had some salmon in panko that I had picked up so I fried them on the side as well.

 

I should have made some miso soup to go with the meal but by then I was tired of cooking stuff! Ha! I called Gary and we ate!

 

With the leftover rice I made some Onigiri to snack on later. Onigiri is rice mixed with different ingredients and eaten. Basically it's a Japanese sandwich. Sometimes you wrap it in seaweed paper and eat it or just the way it is. I am trying out different flavor packets of ingredients to add to rice to make Onigiri. This one had plums, shiso, sesame and some other stuff.

 

 

                                               As Julia Child always says, "Bon Appetit!"