How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!
Today I introduce you to Okra Tempura. This tempura dish has a different texture from the fried-okra you may find in the U.S. The tempura batter is crunchy but not thick. I season it with just sea salt when I eat it so I can enjoy the taste of okra.
My mother used okra in her meals a lot because of the nutrition. Inside, okra has a gooey texture from the pectin (a soluble fiber) and mucin (a protein). These two nutrients improve our digestion. Okra is also high in beta-carotene, minerals, vitamins and so on.
About my tempura batter, I always try to make tempura with a great crunchy (not greasy) texture because it is more delicious. In this recipe, I show you how to make the best batter for crunchy tempura. I hope you like it.
Nabe is a traditional Japanese simmering dish. We simmer sea food or meat with various vegetables in Dashi stock seasoning with cooking Sake and soy sauce.
At home or in restaurants we usually set a cooking pot on a countertop range on the table and share it as cooking the dish. The dish and the cooking warm us and the room up so it is common to have Nabe in winter.
Today I will introduce you to bacon (I use turkey bacon, but you can use any kind) and Napa cabbage millefeuille Nabe, which requires that we set bacon and Napa cabbage leaves alternatively in a pan and simmer in Dashi stock. This time I used Kelp Dashi stock, but you can use any kind of stock you want.
We add many kinds of vegetables to Nabe but Napa cabbage is a must-have vegetable. 95% of Napa cabbage is water so it is easy to eat for everybody because of it’s tender texture. The cabbage water also makes Nabe juicy even when simmering for a long time. Napa cabbage also has great nutrition. It is low calorie and high in vitamin C, potassium, iron, magnesium and so on.
Juicy, tender Napa cabbage and bacon makes your Nabe very delicious! I hope you will like it!!
{Ingredients (servings 2)}
1 head Napa Cabbage
20 slices Bacon
1 cup Kelp Dashi Stock (any kind of stock is okay)
(Recommended instant bonito Dashi powder)Ajinomoto – Hon Dashi
Braising is one common Japanese cooking method for fish. The taste is a typical Japanese “sweet-salty” taste, similar to Teriyaki or Sukiyaki seasoning. We use Cooking Sake, Soy Sauce, Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine and sugar when braising.
We usually braise sardine, flounder, alfonsino, mackerel, cutlass fish, yellowtail and so on. I can’t always get many of these fish where I live in the U.S. so I chose Tilapia this time. Tilapia meat is good because it stays good after 15 minutes of braising and it soaks in the delicious sauce well.
When you braise fish, please add some slices of ginger. This kills the fishy smell and warms up your body because of the Gingerol action.
Enjoy your new fish recipe with steamed rice or with Japanese Sake!!
This is an idea for a quick breakfast recipe. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare and it is also delicious and healthy!!
To make the dish healthier, I cook scrambled egg with canned tuna. Also I add steamed edamame to the plate. When you season the edamame with butter and salt, it becomes like a side dish of corn.
Edamame is high is vitamin B1, vitamin C, protein, fiber, iron, potassium, and so on. Because of the protein and the iron, edamame is a great ingredient for breakfast.
As for the tuna, my mother always said “You can be more smart and do great on tests in school if you eat fish”. She stretched a story about DHA to make me eat breakfast but it was not totally a lie. DHA increases blood vessel elasticity and improve the function of red blood cells so people say it helps make your brain more active.
I hope this recipe will be one of your favorite breakfast recipes!!
Have you ever eaten canned sardines!? It is a great pantry food, which is very useful and delicious! Today I introduce you to “Sautéed Sardines”. This is a canned sardines recipe that is very flavorful, nutritious, and quick!
I often use canned sardines as a salad topping, sauté dish, pasta ingredient, pizza topping, on rice bowls, and so on.
As you know sardines are very substantial. They are high in protein, calcium, vitamin D, DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), vitamin Bs, coenzyme Q10, minerals, and so on. DHA works to activate the brain and EPA works for decreasing LDL cholesterol concentration in the blood and for boosting HDL cholesterol levels. http://nurse-web.jp/kouka/sardine/http://www.wakasanohimitsu.jp/seibun/sardine/ I highly recommend eating sardines (including canned sardines, dried anchovy, or canned anchovy) everyday.
This time I used skinless and boneless canned sardines, but many canned sardines have skin. Even if your canned sardines have skin or bone, you can follow this recipe (You can eat the skin and bones which are high in calcium).
In addition, minced green onion is an essential ingredient in the Japanese diet so I always keep minced green onion in the freezer. I add the frozen minced green onion to the dish during the very last part of cooking process. To store, put minced green onions in a freezer bag and place in the freezer. Please use within a month.
Today I introduce you to steamed white rice with green peas. The Japanese process for cooking rice is a little complicated, so in this recipe I show you the easiest way to cook steamed rice. It takes about an hour, but you don’t need to do much.
We have many kinds of seasoned-steamed rice recipes, because rice is the most important carbohydrate in the Japanese diet. Japanese rice is short-grain rice which is soft, sticky and a little bit sweet in taste. This is good for ease of digestion and also great for making Sushi rice.
The “Green Pea Rice” in this recipe has a slightly salty taste and a very tender green pea texture so even kids who don’t like green peas tend to eat this rice happily.
Green peas are high in protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber and so on. Green Peas also have more vitamin B1 and fiber than many vegetables. But the nutritional value can weaken under the heat so when you cook, you can add the green peas to the recipe as the last part of the cooking process.
I love rice but I don’t have time to cook it for every meal so I always cook large amounts of steamed rice and freeze some of it. To store steamed rice, put cooked rice in a freezer bag and keep in the freezer. When you want to heat it up, you can microwave on a microwavable dish for 2~2:30 minutes. Please use the frozen rice within a month.
This is a common recipe for bacon-wrapped asparagus in Japan. We wrap a cut asparagus with a piece of bacon. The dish is usually pan-fried or grilled. You will often see bacon-wrapped asparagus on a long stick on the menu at Yakitori restaurants in Japan. When making it as a homemade dish, we usually use a toothpick instead of the long stick because it is easy to cook. But be careful about the toothpicks when you and your family eat. Of course you can serve without toothpicks even though the bacon wrap might come off.
I use turkey bacon in this recipe but you can use any kind of bacon you want. And also if you or your family don’t like using cooking Sake or white wine for the dishes, you can substitute stock or broth for those.
We have this dish as a side dish and we sometimes put it in our lunch boxes.
In Japan, some kindergartens, most elementary schools (1st~6th grade) and some junior high schools (7th~9th grade) serve school lunch. If the school doesn’t have school lunch, we bring boxed lunches (sometimes the school also has a small shop to get lunch). My mother made boxed lunches for me and my sister all the time when our school didn’t serve lunch. We loved her lunch boxes so much!!
This is one of common Japanese school lunch.
Recently, many Japanese mothers cook very cute lunch box dishes for their kids, which we call “Character Bento”. They decorate their lunch as cartoon’s characters with many ingredients to make their kids happy to eat everything. I really respect the mothers because they get up very early, prepare their family’s breakfast and a wonderful lunch box for their kids (some of them prepare lunch boxes for their husbands as well, not “Character Bento” though), and then many of these mothers get ready to go to their own work!
My Japanese friend made these boxed lunches! It is incredible!!! The 2 pictures are “Character Bento” for her boys. The 3rd one is a normal Bento for family event.
I recommend this dish with any meal. If you want to have it for breakfast or in a lunch box, you can prepare it the previous day and cook it in the morning, or you can cook it the previous day and microwave in the morning, because the cutting, wrapping and cooking can take a little extra time, especially in the morning.
{Ingredients (servings 2)}
10 Asparagus spears
10 slices Turkey Bacon (any kind of bacon is okay)
I will introduce you to one more traditional Japanese vegetable side dish which is called “Braised Eggplant”. This is also from Buddhist cuisine. It is very delicious, healthy and low-calorie!
If you like eggplant, I highly recommend you try this! You can enjoy the flavorful, tender, and yummy eggplant. The recipe is very easy and very traditional. I simmer eggplant in Japanese Dashi stock, soy sauce, cooking Sake and Mirin. If you like the flavor in Japanese dishes you should keep soy sauce, cooking Sake, Mirin and Dashi stock on hand (here is my Dashi stock recipe in PDF: Homemade Anchovy Dashi Stock, Kelp Dashi stock ) (also some Asian markets carry useful Dashi stock powder). If you want to try more healthy dishes but you are not a big fan of Japanese flavors, you can just simmer the eggplant in vegetable stock and season with a pinch of salt and pepper. This is also a healthy and low-calorie dish. Unfortunately, however, if you cook it this way you will not get the protein that we get from soy sauce. In fact, my family doesn’t eat soy beans often, we usually get the soy nutrition from soy sauce, Tofu, Miso (soy bean paste), Natto (fermented soy beans), soy milk and so on.
In this recipe, I didn’t peel the eggplant because one of the important nutrients, Anthocyanin (antioxidant), is found in high amounts in eggplant skin. If you don’t like the gooey texture that the skin adds you can peel the eggplant.
{Ingredients (servings 2)}
½ Eggplant
1 cup Kelp Dashi Stock
(Recommended Dried Kelp for Dashi stock) Dashi Dried Kelp
People have use this recipe since about 1300 years ago. This dish is typical Buddhist cuisine. Buddhist cuisine is cooked based on Buddhist concepts. The ingredients are mainly beans and vegetables. But the dishes are flavorful and nutritious because they were created to charge the energy of Samurai.
This recipe is a basic Japanese dish in which I cut vegetables and simmer in Japanese Dashi stock. The Dashi stock is the most important ingredient. If you can’t prepare Dashi stock, you can use vegetable stock or chicken stock as a substitute for Japanese Dashi stock. Of course the flavor will change but it will still be healthy! In a similar way, you can use white wine as a substitute for cooking Sake.
This is a side dish so you can have it along with or in place of a salad with your meal!
Mapo-Tofu is a popular Chinese dish. This recipe is totally my mother’s creation based on Mapo-Tofu. My mother came up with this recipe because the original dish is so spicy and I couldn’t handle it. This dish is very healthy because it has great protein, which comes from a combination of meat and tofu, so we always had this Non-Spicy Mapo-Tofu in our house.
The recipe is so easy to cook. It basically involves cooking ground chicken and tofu in chicken broth and then seasoning it in the same pan.
You can also use any kind of ground meat and any kind of broth in this recipe.
I recommend you enjoy tasting everything on the plate, the meat, the tofu, and the soup flavor! Because of the finished presentation you may think of it is a soup dish, but we eat it as a main dish with steamed rice.
and sugar when braising.
(short-grain rice)
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