How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!
Agedashi-Tofu, which is a typical Japanese homemade dish, is fried tofu with Dashi sauce.
Tofu is an important ingredient in Buddhist cuisine. Japanese think this is a macribian food because tofu is high in great-quality-protein. Tofu is made from only soybean. The soybean is called “Meat of a field” because it is rich in nutrients, which are linoleum acid, lecithin, isoflavone, saonin, trypsin inhibitor and so on. And also tofu is low calorie and high in water so it is good as a diet food.
Let’s try to eat 1/4 pack of tofu every day!
{Ingredients (servings 2)}
1 pack (14 oz.) Firm Tofu
1 ½ cups Kelp Dashi Stock
(Recommended Dried Kelp for Dashi stock) Dashi Dried Kelp
This is a quick healthy cucumber pickle recipe. It is so simple that you don’t even need to use a knife.
I break a cucumber with a rolling pin and my hands. This is a traditional way. It doesn’t take time to marinate when you follow this way because irregular surfaces can absorb the sauce easily.
Cucumber is high in potassium and water. Therefore it is effective for our health to eat cucumber.
I add ginger to the pickle sauce. Ginger is very nutritious and healthy. It helps our blood flow, helps speed up our metabolism, and blocks the oxidation process in our bodies.
This is not fried rice, but steamed seasoned rice. In Japan a major part of the diet is RICE. Traditionally we eat white rice with every meal. A long time ago Japanese people ate millet.
Today, we sometimes mix the rice with other ingredients to make Mushroom Rice, Bamboo Shoot Rice, Chestnut Rice, Greenbean Rice and so on. These are all steamed. If you have a rice cooker, it is very easy to cook!
Mushroom is low calorie (about 18 kcal per 100 grams). Also high in fiber and high in minerals (especially potassium). I didn’t used dried mushrooms this time, but dried mushrooms are usually high in vitamin D. This dish is cooked in one pot or in a rice cooker so it preserves the nutritions and amazing flavor.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Rice porridge is an important dish for Japanese. We have the dish when we are sick, when we have no appetite, or when we want to heal the stomach after overeating such as after new year celebrations.
Rice porridge is easy to cook (just put washed dried rice and water in a pan and cook!) and you can season it however you want. We usually eat it with salt or pickles. You can also put sugar and butter like oatmeal or cereal.
{Ingredients (Serves 2)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
Today I introduce you to Takikomi Gohan which is seasoned rice with vegetables. It has a similar taste to fried rice, but it is steamed so a lot healthier. You can add vegetables (preferably root vegetables), shellfish, and/or chicken, and seasoning to the rice and cook just like cooking white rice.
The basic arrangement for many Japanese meals is called “Ichi-juu, San-sai”, and consists of one bowl of cooked rice, one kind of soup, and three vegetable or fish side dishes. Takikomi Gohan includes rice and some vegetables or fish so it is a fuss-free dish to help arrange Ichi-jiru, San-sai. And, or course, it just plain delicious! Also steamed rice absorbs the Umami of the ingredients so it is very nutritious and delicious!!
We sometimes have Takikomi Gohan as a Bento (boxed lunch) because it is tasty even when it is cold.
This time I use Shiitake mushroom, Daikon, Carrot and Snow pea with Kelp Dashi stock. So it has lots of vitamins, minerals, carotene and fucoidan. Dried Shiitake mushroom has vitamin D so we might want to eat winter time which has short sunshine hours.
{Ingredients (for 2 people)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
Japanese use Daikon (Japanese white radish) for many dishes. Daikon is high in water, vitamin C and vitamin A, and is a low calorie ingredient. Daikon helps digestion so we sometimes eat fish or meat with grated daikon.
Today I will introduce “Simmered Daikon”. This dish is really easy to cook and delicious! It is one of the best dishes in my mother’s recipes. It is called “Daikon no taitan” just in the Kyoto area (Kansai region) of Japan, so this dish is one representative of Kyoto.
{Ingredients (For 2 people)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
Daikon (Japanese white radish)
2 ½ cups Kelp Dashi stock
(Recommended Dried Kelp for Dashi stock) Dashi Dried Kelp
Ozouni (Rice-cake soup) is a celebratory dish, and one of the dishes we eat on New Year’s day.
When we eat this, traditionally we give thanks for last year’s harvest and wish for a good harvest in the coming year and for the safety of our family.
Interestingly, the ingredients are different depending on the region. Some people dissolve White Miso (Soy bean paste) in the broth. Some people use sweet rice cake which has sweet bean paste in it.
Today I introduce my mother’s Ozouni. I use normal rice cake, Daikon (Japanese white radish) and carrots. This makes the dish more celebratory because in Japan we usually use red and white color combinations in celebratory situations.
In Japan, New Year’s day is the most important day of the year and many Japanese spend New Year’s day with family, feeling grateful for everything and wishing for a good year for everyone.
Have a happy New Year!!
{Ingredients (For 2 people)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
Today I will show you how to cook “Kelp Dashi stock”.
Kelp is very nutritious and delicious when prepared correctly. It is low calorie, high in iodine, minerals, and fucoidan. It is good for making your skin smooth, hair and nails strong, and also helps to treat constipation. It is also a great food for people on diets. It is good for our health.
Significantly, while Kelp is gooey and chewy, because of its nutritional elements and fucoidan, Kelp dashi stock is not gooey and doesn’t have a strong smell so you can use it for many dishes.
I introduced “Anchovy Dashi stock” before. These two dashi stocks differ in taste and flavor. We use Anchovy Dashi stock when we want a stronger fish taste in dishes. On the other hand Kelp Dashi stock is usually used for dishes which we want to enjoy the individual tastes of ingredients such as vegetables, fish and so on. Of course, it is good for vegetarians and people who don’t like Anchovy Dashi stock smell.
We usually use the kelp for other dishes after we cook Dashi stock. This time I will use the leftover kelp to introduce a side dish which we call “Shio Konbu (Salted Kelp)”. Japanese usually eat it with cooked white rice. Shio Konbu is also great in your salad. It makes your salad more nutritious, healthy and delicious!!
{Ingredients (for Dashi Stock)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
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