Japanese cooking thread: udon and soba and miso, o my!

[politicat]

We do a lot of Japanese cooking - soba, udon, miso soup, sushi when I can get the fish (not easy, since this is Colorado, and oceans are not convenient.)

Miso soup with rice is my "I'm sick and need comfort" soup, more so than its predecessor, french onion.

Tonkatsu is Mr. Pcat's food of the gods, and we both love chasoba soup with duck.

Neither of us are Japanese; I've only been there briefly, and he's a stay-at-home American, but we've both considered moving to Japan.

Pcat

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. This is a tasty japanese salad..but you need a japanese market nearby

1/2 lb of mixed japanese mushrooms...enoki, oyster and shitaki, (cooked either by sauteeing and draining or by toasting in toaster oven on foil with a dash of oil) cur up mushroom

5 julienned pieces of burdock root
1 cup jicima
1/2 cup japanese cucumber (or arabic cucumbers work too- anything with a thin peel)
1/4 cup radish sprouts

combine all above ingredients

For dressing use 2 tablespoons sesame oil and 2 tablespoons rice vingar...drizzle over salad and mix well

garnish with toasted sesame seeds

If you can find it there is a japanese herb called Mitsuba..this can be chopped for garnish..you can also use cilantro (about one tablespoon chopped)

[politicat]

4. Oh, that sounds delightful.

I may do that for a potluck I have coming up!

Pcat

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I wish I knew more about Asian cuisine in general

American and European cooking are easy for me, but I wish I knew more about Asian cooking. Any time I cook Asia, I need to have recipe in front of me. Any other cooking I am able to improvise and make it up on the fly. Like most on this board, I understand seasonings and the affect of ingredient A on ingredient B. Not so with Asia. To me, this is truly "foreign", even though I have been to Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and ate native all the time.

How did you get to where you are? Did you just keep at it? Take a class? Cook books?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. I learned Japanese food by watching my chefs in sushi and yakitori bars

the rest I figured out or looked up. Thai food I learned via a Thai employee.

[politicat]

5. Many influences...

I had a friend in middle school whose parents owned an asian restaurant - they were Vietnamese, but her father basically stepped off the boat and went to cooking school in CA before they opened the restaurant. So they got me started.

In college, the closest grocery to my hellish little apartment was the asian grocery, so I took to pretending I knew what the hell I was looking at (and occasionally way-laying some sympathetic clerk or young person who looked like THEY knew what the hell they were looking at - and often they were doing the same thing I was) and reading lots of labels. I fell in love with kamaboko (a steamed fish cake) that way. I had a short trip to Japan while in college (at the uni's expense) and I took a couple hours to wander through the more residential neighborhoods and watch the cooks in the little neighborhood restaurants make their dishes. I learned a LOT that way.

I checked a lot of books out of the library, but the best one I've found for the beginner was one that my estranged father gave me for holidays a couple years ago. It's just been reissued as I just saw it at Borders and amazon-borders has it used.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0681323272/qid%3D1103170319/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-4989140-0246462

This is the editorial review; the only change I would make is that the "short" intro is a third of the book. It's very considerable, and very useful for the novice to Asian cuisine.

Absolutely a fabulous book for those who are just starting in Japanese cooking or for those who just love gorgeous pictures. The first section of the book is comprised of a short cultural history to help you get the feel of why Japanese food is how it is-this includes a little section on regional foods and their differences-and goes from there to a short menu ideas section that divides the menus into the four seasons. After that, there is page after page of color photos and descriptive text that introduces you to not only foreign foods, but equipment, utensils, crockery and cutlery, drinking vessels, and much more. The next section is comprised of the popular ingredients used in Japanese cooking-rice/rice products, sauces, pickles, tea, tofu, mushrooms, seaweeds, herbs/spices...this section in it of itself is worth the price of the book. For those of us who cannot read Japanese, the pictures are detailed and beautiful-a boon in the Asian grocery. Lastly, the recipes are well written and tasty covering everything from sushi to soups and noodles to desserts and cakes. Inluded at the end there's also a shopping index for Japanese resources. This book is well rounded and a definate jewel to add to your collection. My only complaint would be that the recipes themselves use the Japanese names for the ingredients without a corresponding English name in parentheses. Although there is a glossary included, it's kind of a pain to keep flipping back and forth. All in all, that's such a minor part of a fab book.

Pcat

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. thanks..ordering it now