Oh, Japan... ^__^

[chibirisuchan]

Was in Chicago this weekend for May convention planning. To me, this meant a rare opportunity to shop in the refrigerated section of the Japanese grocery store -- it's not all that often when the outside temperature is above freezing so as not to damage things like fresh shiso leaves, but also cool enough that things can survive the 5 hour round

Comments

[mailechan]

Um...I don't think that chirimenjako tastes like caramel, though it does sort of have the same kind of consistency. You just made me shudder to consider fish in caramel sauce. *loves your images--sort of*

What I like to do is take a cucumber, peel it, and then cut into very thin slices. put into a container and add about 1 tablespoon of salt and 1/4 cup water. Cover the container, shake vigorously, and refrigerate for a day. Quick pickles!

You can also take a cabbage, cut it up into strips a little thicker than slaw, add 1-2 cups water, 3 tablespoons salt, and put into a plastic container. put a heavy plate or wooden cover on the cabbage and weigh it down with a rock or brick. Let it sit for 1-2 days in a cool place and you get tsukemono! Some people also like to add a bit of rice wine or rice vinegar to it, but I like mine with just salt.

[chibirisuchan]

I love quick pickles! ^___^ My mom's not-at-all-Japanese-but-still-tasty version involves cucumbers, sweet red onions, and vinegar, and the red onions turn the juice pink. I'm such a rice vinegar fiend I pretty much always put some in, but I'll have to make a Maile-style vinegarless batch to find out.

Do you like daikon radishes? One of my favorite quick pickles is namasu - julienne (or shred if you're feeling lazy) some daikon and carrots together, wring with a good sprinkling of salt in a strainer basket, let drip for a bit, then rinse off most of the salt and add rice vinegar and some dashi broth (or just water if you don't have dashi) until it's tart but not face-sucking sour. Lasts a good several days in the refrigerator; maybe longer, but it never survives me that long! :3 (It's not very authentic to add jicama but sometimes I toss some of that in too...)

[mailechan]

I'm not much of a vinegar fan. I think it comes from a bad experience with it in my childhood (it looks like water in a bottle, you know?) so I tend to avoid it most of the time. The only exception I make is for things like takuan and some cooked dishes. Although if you take bean sprouts, blanch them for 30 seconds in cold water and then refrigerate with sesame oil and a touch of vinegar, that is pretty yummy.

I love daikon. I really like to grate it really fine and stir it into a mixture of shoyu and dashi to make a great dipping sauce for cold somen. With some green onion and mandarin orange slices--nummy! I also like namasu, though I've never made it before.

Erf. I mean blanch the bean sprouts in BOILING water, not cold. Geez, I need to stop typing first thing in the mornings.

[fer_de_lance]

Um...I don't think that chirimenjako tastes like caramel,

Thank HEAVEN. I admit that the idea of fish-in-caramel-sauce was giving me serious queasy reactions. :D

[ani_mama]

Koreans eat most of the same stuff but have different names for them. We tend not to use as much weird colors in the pickles though. It is possible to get daikon pickle that is not screaming yellow!

The teeny dried fish freak out my American Hubby. Especially all those wee eyes. haha. I take a cooler and stock up too during the winter, because the nearest Asian market is 2 hours away.

[chibirisuchan]

ooooooh! Could you possibly tell me the Korean name for this stuff (ogonori in Japanese) and this stuff (ao-tosaka in Japanese)?

The Asian markets in my town are run by Korean people, and when I ask them about seaweed varieties with Japanese words since I don't know the Korean words, they blink a lot and then try to give me either wakame or hijiki, which are very tasty but aren't what I'm trying to find for the salad they tend to tuck into the tops of inari sushi (those little golden tofu pouches) in the local restaurants...

[ani_mama]

Ask for "mee-yuk". Koreans generally do not differentiate that much between seaweed types in packaging. The dried stuff goes in soup or gets fried(twi-gak), and that's not what you want. The non-dry stuff is usually salted and kept in the freezer section. Hope this helps!

[chibirisuchan]

Awesome! Thank you so much! *plots a swing by the Asian grocery on the way home from work*

[raisedbymoogles]

The Japanese are a wacky people.

[chibirisuchan]

Well, the theory started out good - get five different colors into every meal in order to make sure you've got a good healthy variety of nutrients going!

It, uh, just doesn't quite count if you dye the food those colors... but don't tell that to the Mad Food Science Marketing Teams. :3

[fer_de_lance]

I want to try the sakura-denbu. And one of the things with extra pink-and-white wtfery. :D

If I knew what shiso was, I'd try the shibazuke, too; I like pickled cucumbers, and frankly it might improve eggplant -- couldn't make it worse, anyway. :D But then, I like food colouring. (When I was a kid, I used to add it to water, just so my water would look more interesting while I drank it.)

I do love teriyaki nori with a deep and abiding love: Take seaweed. Press and roast it to the consistency of facsimile paper, with the aid of a gallon of soy sauce, then cut into slices. It's crunchy little wafers of deep green awesome.

[chibirisuchan]

Shiso's a kind of distant mint-cousin - I think the English name is perilla? I've also seen it called beefsteak plant. It doesn't taste particularly *minty* per se, just sort of bright and vivid (which doesn't help, I know, I'm sorry...) If you've had red umeboshi, you've probably had something shiso-flavored.

oh yum, teriyaki nori. I love sprinkling shreds of that on nice hot rice. mmmmmm... ^__^