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How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!

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EGG-FREE Healthy Sweet Potato Treats (Vegan/Vegetarian/Gluten-Free)

This is an EGG-FREE and MILK-FREE healthy, tasty  Japanese-style sweet treat. Because of its sweet taste, Japanese use it for desert a lot. Examples are baked sweet potato, caramelized fried sweet potato, sweet potato snacks, dried sweet potato, mushed sweet potato and so on.

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Sweet potato is high in fiber, vitamin B, C, E, and potassium. The amount of vitamin C in a sweet potato is 10 times of that in an apple. And the vitamin C in sweet potato does not break easily when heated.

Sweet potatos gain their sweet taste when cooked slowly. So I don’t use the microwave to make them tender so I can get a really sweet taste in the dish.

This recipe uses a small amount of Mirin instead of egg as a brush coat on the dough before baking. So this is also a great sweet for kids!

I hope you will like it!

{Ingredients (15 small balls)}

1 Peeled Sweet Potato

3 cups Water

3 Tbsp. Sugar

2 Tbsp. Gluten-Free Margarine

3 Tbsp. Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine

Pinch of Organic Black Sesame Seeds

Here is my recipe in PDF (5MB): Japanese Sweet Potato Treats

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Sweet-Savory Japanese-Style Pumpkin (Vegan/Vegetarian/Gluten-Free)

In the Japanese diet, simmered vegetable dishes are very important to fulfill the terms of the Japanese basic meals rule, which is called “Ichi-juu, San-sai.” This basic meals rule means basic meals should consist of one bowl of cooked rice, one kind of soup and three vegetable or fish side dishes.

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Also simmered vegetable dishes are very common in Mahayana Buddhist cuisine for Buddhist monks. These dishes are an important nutritional source for the monks who are forbidden from eating meat and fish.

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In the Japanese dish, C. maxima pumpkin is a common ingredient. It is high in vitamins, potassium, fiber and beta-carotene. The taste is very sweet. We also use this pumpkin for sweets. Interestingly the pumpkin is lower in calories and carbohydrates than bananas!

This recipe is incredibly easy. You can put water, Japanese common seasonings and the pumpkin in a pan at the same time and just simmer. We don’t use Dashi stock because the pumpkin has great flavor itself.

I hope you can add this dish to your dinner.

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

½ Pumpkin

2 cups Water

2 Tbsp. Sugar

3 Tbsp. Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

2 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

2 Tbsp. Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine

Here is my recipe in PDF: Sweet-Savory Japanese-Style Pumpkin


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Pumpkin Croquette

Today I introduce you to a simple and healthy vegetable croquette recipe. This time I cooked the croquette in the oven so there is no need to worry about hot oil and messing up a  kitchen. The ingredients are pumpkin (C. maxima), onion and carrot.

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The differences between this recipe and the potato croquette recipe I posted earlier are taste and nutrition. I used C. maxima pumpkin (Kabocha), which is common in Japan. C. maxima pumpkins are especially high in vitamins, potassium, fiber and beta-carotene. They have more of a strong sweet taste than butternut squash, are not soggy and taste very good. So this kind of pumpkin is good for simmering dishes, a traditional style in Japanese cooking.

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In this recipe I show you my mother’s original batter for fried dishes. Normally fry-batters are made from flour, egg and panko (bread crumbs). My mother’s batters are an egg mixture (egg, flour and white vinegar) and panko  (bread crumbs). The white vinegar makes the croquette batter very fluffy texture. You can use this egg mixture for any fried dishes such as fried chicken. Please try it!

{Ingredients (12 balls)}
*Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*

½ Pumpkin (Kabocha)

1 Onion

1 Carrot

1 Egg

1 Tbsp. Flour

2 Tbsp. water

1 tsp. Rice Vinegar

1 cup Panko Bread Crumbs Japanese Style

3 Tbsp. Olive Oil

½ tsp. Salt

¼ tsp. Black Pepper

Here is my recipe in PDF: Vegetable Croquette


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Steamed Chicken (Gluten-Free)

Today I introduce you to a very easy, delicious and healthy recipe called Mushi-dori (Steamed Chicken). You can use this steamed chicken as an ingredients in your salad, soup, noodles, and so on. Of course, you can also eat it as dish by itself and goes well with any kind of sauce.

This is a popular Japanese dish. Also, it is similar to Chinese and Thai steamed chicken, although the seasonings are different.

For this dish I recommend using chicken breast because of texture, flavor and health benefits.

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I steam the chicken breast with ginger and cooking Sake. Ginger is very nutritious and healthy. It helps our blood flow, helps speed up our metabolism, and blocks the oxidation process in our bodies. Also, ginger is very flavorful and helps rid the meat of its chicken smell.

Also, in this recipe I show you a famous sauce for steamed chicken called Goma-dare (Sesame sauce). You can also use this sauce for Shabu-Shabu (boiled, thinly sliced beef).

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This is White Roasted Sesame Seeds I used in this recipe.

Sesame is also very nutritious. It is high in minerals, vitamins, fiber and protein. The most important ingredient in sesame is Lignan which is an antioxidant. Lignan helps liver function and cholesterol depletion. It is good for our health to take 1 Tbsp. of sesame per day.

{Ingredients (Serves 2)}
*Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*

1 lb. Chicken Breast

¼ cup Cooking Sake

¼ cup water

1 tsp. grated ginger

[Sauce]

1 Tbsp. leftover juice of chicken

1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

1 Tbsp. Sugar

1 Tbsp. Miso Soyabean Paste

1 Tbsp. Rice Vinegar

1 Tbsp. Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine

1 Tbsp. White Roasted Sesame Seeds

½ Tbsp. Pure Sesame Oil

Here is my recipe in PDF: Steamed Chicken