Stir fried fuki

Yesterday the Chinese government announced that around 200 people were victims of the rains in South China. If you have never lived in rainy places, maybe it's difficult to understand how dangerous   heavy rain is. Those places are subject to flooding, landslides, high waves, rockfalls and dangerous driving conditions.

Recently in Kyusyu (the southern part of Japan) also had a record rains over 800mm in 6 days. They are in a dangerous situation now as the land has absorbed a lot of water.

Today I will cook fuki (a type of wild vegetables). This type of fuki is called 'rawan buki' which is from Hokkaido.

Ingredients;

fuki (pickled with salt)

age

sesame

sesame oil

soy sauce

mirin

sugar

salt

1- Boil fuki to desalinate. Cut the fuki and age thinly.

2- Stir fry 1 with sesame oil. When it's cooked, adjust the taste with soy sauce, sugar, mirin and salt.

3- Put some sesame and chili (if you like).

Itadakimasu.

Zenmai rice

The Soccer World Cup is on now in South Africa! Which team are you going for?

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!

Boiled chicken and konjac

Hello!
Sorry I have not updated the blog for a while as I've been traveling in Vietnam for two weeks. It really surprised me to find out that Vietnam is very different to Japan. Actually it's more difficult to find a similarity than even many places in Europe.

During the journey, it was always a joy to have the Vietnamese food. Because of its hot and humid climate, I often had no appetite but I still tried to drive myself to experience as many types of food as possible. I could not miss any good meals there! I would like to introduce some of them in this blog.

However, I missed Japanese food terribly after the long time abroad. As soon as I got back, I cooked miso soup, rice, salad, Japanese omelet and the boiled chicken and konjac...

Ingredients:

konjac

age (fried tofu)

chicken

soy sauce

sugar

mirin

sake

1- Cut konjac roughly with spoon, age and chicken. Boil all the ingredients and drain the water.

2- Heat a table spoon of oil and fry 1.

3- Put a cup of water, sugar, mirin, sake and soy sauce in and boil until all the ingredients are cooked.

Itadakimasu.