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

Tag Archives: Finger Food


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2-Delicious-Type of Cucumber Sushi Roll (Vegetarian/ Gluten-free)

Today I introduce you to “2-Delicious-Type of Cucumber Sushi Roll”. Most people know about sushi rolls wrapped with dried seaweed. But this roll is wrapped with thin fried egg. The other cucumber roll is made with the rice side out. I think this is more colorful than regular sushi rolls, and it looks fancy. It is a very healthy and delicious dish!!

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When you make sushi rolls, you need a Makisu which is a bamboo mat, to make a good shape. You can buy a Makisu at many Asian supermarkets and also on  Amazon.

The recipe is

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Make sushi rice vinegar with rice vinegar, sugar and salt. Mix the sushi rice vinegar and cooked rice. (You can buy some cooked rice. Also I have a pan cooked rice recipe. If you have a rice cooker, you might want to use it.)

Here is my cooked rice recipe in PDF: White Rice Recipe

Make thin fried egg (mix with slurry so as not to break easily). Spread the sushi rice on the egg on the Makisu. Place the cucumber and roll up.

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To make cucumber inside-out sushi roll, spread the sushi rice on the dried seaweed. Place it rice side down on a piece of parchment paper on the Makisu, put the cucumber and roll up.

Detailed and visual instructions can be found in the recipe PDF: 2-Delicious-Type of Cucumber Sushi Roll

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Ingredients (servings 2)
*Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*

½ Cucumber

1 Sushi Nori Organic Seaweed

1 Egg

3 cups cooked rice

½ Tbsp. Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

1 tsp. Corn Starch

1 tsp. Water

50 ml Rice Vinegar

1 Tbsp. Sugar

1 tsp. Salt

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Makisu Bamboo Mat

Parchment Paper

Detailed and visual instructions can be found in the recipe PDF: 2-Delicious-Type of Cucumber Sushi Roll

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Rice Croquette (Vegetarian)

Today I introduce you to “Rice Croquette”. It is delicious, easy and a great dish for potluck party! Also kids will love it!!

Make creamy white sauce.

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Mix steamed rice, the white sauce and cheese.

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Batter with flour, egg, and bread crumbs.

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Fry about 2 minutes.

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The outside of the croquette is crunchy and the inside is cheesy and smooth!

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If you want, you can serve with your favorite tomato sauce. That would make the croquette look and taste great!!

{Ingredients (makes about 20 croquettes)}

3 cups Steamed Rice
(Recommended Rice)Nishiki Premium Rice
(Recommended Brown Rice)Tamanishiki Super Premium Brown Rice

3 Tbsp. Flour (total)

1 Tbsp. Butter or Margarine

1 cup Milk

1 cup Shredded Cheese (any kind)

2 eggs

½ cup Bread Crumbs
(Recommended Panko)PANKO BREAD CRUMBS

Vegetable Oil for frying

Salt and Pepper

Onion Powder, Garlic Powder (to taste)

Detailed and visual instructions can be found in the recipe PDF: Rice Croquette


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Very Flavorful!! “Asparagus with Bacon”

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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

A pinch of Salt and Pepper

¼ cup Cooking Sake or white wine

1 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

Here is my recipe in PDF (5 MB): Asparagus with Bacon


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Simple Finger Food “Sushi Canapé” (Gluten-Free)

This “Sushi Canapé” recipe is totally original and great for a potluck. The ingredients are easy and it is a simple finger food.

The manner for making a sushi roll for this dish is not traditional. I came up with an easy way to roll which everybody can do without fail. But the taste is totally like regular sushi! You can top it with whatever you want such as smoke salmon, fish row, vegetables and so on. Once you know this recipe, you can serve Japanese sushi to your family and friends!

Enjoy your sushi roll!!

{Ingredients (15~20 canapés)}

2 pints Steamed Rice

3 beaten eggs

¼ lb. Ground Chicken

1 Avocado

¼ tsp. Wasabi Paste or Organic Wasabi Powder(combine with water to make Wasabi paste)

3~4 pieces Dried Seaweed for Sushi

50 ml Rice Vinegar

2 Tbsp. Sugar (total)

1 ¼ tsp. Salt (total)

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

1 Tbsp. Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine

1 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

Makisu Bamboo Sushi Mat for rolling sushi

Here is my recipe in PDF (9MB): Sushi Canape

Here is “White rice” recipe in PDF (5MB): White Rice