Donburi meals are Japanese comfort food, served in fast food restaurants, available in ready to heat-and-serve packets, or cooked at home for family. Donburi (kanji: 丼; hiragana: どんぶり) are also the over-sized rice bowls themselves. Rice, usually white rice, is topped with meat, seafood, tofu, and/or vegetables. I wanted something a bit more hearty. I used a delicious nutty 6-Grain Rice mixture from Kagayaki.
Lemon paired with chicken is popular around the world. This Japanese lemon chicken is sure to find a regular place on your menus because it is familiar but unique. Because it is steamed with lemon slices and vegetables, it is quick to prepare, and low-fat, and the simple (almost fool-proof, well see my notes) sauce is a beautiful garnish. This recipe is party-perfect with pink, green, and gold.
A ginkgo tree is lovely with its summer grey-green fan-shaped leaves fluttering in the slightest breeze. We are lucky to have a female gingko in our front yard. This is our first year in this house, and I’ve watched the tree, waiting for the edible “nuts” to fall. The fleshy seed coat may look like yellow cherries, but it smells something like very stinky cheese or even dog feces. This post describes how to prepare ginkgo nuts for a fun and tasty snack.
Oh sweet potato cakes!!
My vegetable garden got a late start with the cold wet spring. But suddenly it exploded into a weed bed. In mid-June, we did manage to put in a few tomato plants, some shiso, basil, and marigolds.
The plant that is surrounding the tomatoes and shiso is a “weed” called purslane. I’d not seen it in such profusion away from a sidewalk or parking lot before. It’s a pretty plant, and after a bit of research I decided to give it a culinary treatment. Nice! First was this salad.
Like Ms. Loren, I love spaghetti. And Japanese wafu (Western) spaghetti is too good to deprive my husband of the experience: Spaghetti Napolitan! During the U.S. occupation of Japan, this scrumptious dish became popular in restaurants all over the country. It is comfort food—a meal you’d eat because your mom made it for you. The predominate flavor comes from ketchup, a condiment with variations all over our earth: fruity, sweet, sour, and sometimes hot.
Yes, I do know that ketchup has been denigrated by many gourmands…
Sweet white miso and sweet orange carrots make a harmonious pair, a crunchy nutty flavor to savor! This unconventional combination reveals how even a common root vegetable can be exotic.
Mr. Tess bought shrimp and scallops for a pasta dish, but he did not use the scallops. They were beautiful large specimens, smelling of the sea, though only four. They were perfect for a small side dish for my lamb chop and corn on the cob dinner.
Scallop dengaku is an example of modern Japanese cooking mixing traditions with principles and flavors of European cooking. In this case, a gratin technique: the scallops are baked and not grilled on skewers.
On our trip to the Farmers’ Market last week, and we showed enough restraint not to buy more than we’d use in a week. I bought some lovely small Japanese eggplants. We grilled them on the hibachi, in the dark—it’s getting dark too much earlier again—and some of them were overcooked. Also, if you study the picture of the plated nasu dengaku, note that I applied quite a bit more sauce than needed on them; even so, this recipe is a very nice way to eat eggplants. Try the recipe but use a lighter hand.
Tess's Japanese Kitchen 