Your Home for Homemade Japanese Food

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

Tag Archives: potassium


by 1 Comment

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.

photo2_large

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.

kabotya

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


by Leave a comment

Easy Homestyle Japanese Steamed Fish (Gluten-Free)

Steaming is a simple and healthy way to cook. And you can steam in the oven so it is very easy! Steamed dishes are very flavorful, the ingredients are tender, and steaming helps keep all of the ingredient’s nutrition!!

Steamed fish in aluminum foil is a traditional Japanese dish; although Japanese used to use paper instead of aluminum foil. Steaming this way has many practical benefits such as not keeping a fish smell inside the house from cooking, using fewer dishes, great preservation of each ingredient’s nutrition, condensation of amazing flavor and so on. I used Tilapia, onion, carrot and green onion. You can also use a variety of different vegetables, most kinds of fish and shellfish, a variety of meats and so on. You can taste each ingredient’s great flavor, which makes this approach different from other cooking methods.

Tilapia is high in potassium and vitamin D, E and of course omega-3. And also it is bland-tasting so you can cook it in many ways, like frying, steaming, sauté, baking and so on.

gc_gptActImage20090501065630

Japanese eat fish a lot so I highly recommend eating fish at least occasionally to stay healthy.

{Ingredients (Servings 2)}

2 Pieces of Tilapia

1 Carrot

1 Onion

2 Tbsp. chopped Green Onion

2 tsp. Gluten-Free Margarine

2 Tbsp. Cooking Sake or White Wine

Pinch of Salt (to taste)

Pinch of Black Pepper (to taste)

Here is my recipe in PDF: Japanese Steamed Fish


by Leave a comment

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.

kabotya

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.

 *Click picture to link to this product on Amazon*

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


by 3 Comments

Simmered Taro and Chicken (Gluten-Free)

Simmered food is a traditional delicious Japanese dish. There are many kinds of vegetable or fish simmered dishes, such as root vegetables, eggplant, lettuce, flounder, anchovy and so on. My mother carefully taught me how to cook simmered dishes because traditionally these dishes are called “Homemade taste,” and in old Japanese traditions women who can cook simmered dishes were considered full-fledged wives, so my mother thought I might want to cook these dishes well for my husband. Of course, we live in a different era today and my husband and I often cook together so we have the great culinary tradition without the sexist overtones.

Basically, the ingredients are root vegetables so the dish includes a lot of fiber which is good for helping digestion. I also used chicken breast which it is low in fat and high in great protein.

141030_ooshima012_480_360

Taro is an important ingredient in homemade taste Japanese dishes. You can get it easily at most grocery stores in the US. Taro is high in potassium and water. Taro also is lower in calories than other kind of potato. When you chew taro, it can feel slightly gooey. This feeling comes from mucin, which is also in our saliva and stomach juice, and it helps the stomach function better.

Enjoy this traditional, nutritious and delicious dish!!

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

0.5 lb. Chicken Breast or Thigh

1 peeled Carrot

1 peeled Onion

4 Dried Shiitake Mushrooms

1 cup Water (leftover from soaking Shiitake)

3 Taros

5 tablespoons Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

5 tablespoons Cooking Sake

4 tablespoons Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine

Here is my recipe in PDF: Simmered Taro and Chicken