Many of my Japanese friends don't seem to be interested. One reason could be that the Japanese team had never been good enough to get into the tournament.
By the way, do you know what the black plant is? (see the following picture) It is a dried mountain vegetable called zenmai. A nice person I met in Akita sent it to us last month. If you gather zenmai and dry it like this, you can keep it for a long time and boil it whenever you want to cook. Then it gets back like fresh ones. Very clever!
I didn't expect that it could become so big when I boiled, so I gave some to my friend.
Ingredients:
zenmai (boiled)
carrot
age- fried tofu
soy sauce (1tbsp)
sake (2tbsps)
mirin (2tbsps)
salt (1/2tsp)
konbu- dried seaweed
Japanese rice (3cups)
Japanese mochi rice (1cup)
1- Mix two types of rice, wash both types and keep the mixture in a strainer for ~30 minutes.
2- Cut the zenmai, carrot and age.
3- Put the rice with the right amount of water in the pot. Then add all the other ingredients.
4- Don't open the lid until the end. When it's finished cooking, steam it for a little. Stir it roughly.
Itadakimasu!
