Things I've learned from Japanese cooking
1. It is apparently impossible to find a good dashi or miso soup base that isn't riddled with free glutamates. Now, I might have better anticipated this considering I was walking into the Land of MSG while shopping at the local Asian market for basic ingredients.
I did find a good, palatable tonkatsu sauce from Kikkoman (seriously, the chain store nearby has everything else by Kikkoman! Why not tonkatsu?), an udon broth that I can probably tweak for soups, and some dried miso pellets. I bet if those suckers sit in hot water for a while, it will turn into miso soup.
(For those of you unaware, excessive consumption of free glutamates in the form of MSG or hydrolyzed yeast/veggie extracts gives me the kind of migraine I wouldn't wish anyone to suffer. OK, maybe on someone particularly heinous. But not just anyone.)
2. Pretzels and chocolate make a damn tasty snack. Of course, I couldn't fathom this from the package, which is adorned in typical Japanese style with cute renderings of hamburgers and in big bold letters, "EVERYBURGER."
I'm not sure every burger tastes quite like these do. (I'll post a photo of the box soon as I can find the camera! It's something to be seen for sure!)
3. If I cook it, I can get my hubby to eat just about anything. He really liked the cucumber and vinegar salad I made the other night, despite its vinegary-ness and his grandma's use of vinegar to "teach" him not to swear as a child.
However, we did find out that shrimp, sake, and Velveeta do not make a tasty hot dish. Never mind that the cuts of broccoli I used were entirely inappropriate; the sake and Velveeta flavors clashed something fierce, and the Velveeta did not mix in with it and the milk to make a properly-behaving sauce. On top of that, it just tastes (*@#ing fake.
Oh well, lesson learned. At least he tried it, and I know what to do differently next time.
I did find a good, palatable tonkatsu sauce from Kikkoman (seriously, the chain store nearby has everything else by Kikkoman! Why not tonkatsu?), an udon broth that I can probably tweak for soups, and some dried miso pellets. I bet if those suckers sit in hot water for a while, it will turn into miso soup.
(For those of you unaware, excessive consumption of free glutamates in the form of MSG or hydrolyzed yeast/veggie extracts gives me the kind of migraine I wouldn't wish anyone to suffer. OK, maybe on someone particularly heinous. But not just anyone.)
2. Pretzels and chocolate make a damn tasty snack. Of course, I couldn't fathom this from the package, which is adorned in typical Japanese style with cute renderings of hamburgers and in big bold letters, "EVERYBURGER."
I'm not sure every burger tastes quite like these do. (I'll post a photo of the box soon as I can find the camera! It's something to be seen for sure!)
3. If I cook it, I can get my hubby to eat just about anything. He really liked the cucumber and vinegar salad I made the other night, despite its vinegary-ness and his grandma's use of vinegar to "teach" him not to swear as a child.
However, we did find out that shrimp, sake, and Velveeta do not make a tasty hot dish. Never mind that the cuts of broccoli I used were entirely inappropriate; the sake and Velveeta flavors clashed something fierce, and the Velveeta did not mix in with it and the milk to make a properly-behaving sauce. On top of that, it just tastes (*@#ing fake.
Oh well, lesson learned. At least he tried it, and I know what to do differently next time.