La petite biscotte

About 75% of all tea produced in Japan is Sencha. Sencha is a rather “common” tea that is drank every day. It has a light green to yellow color and a fresh grassy taste. Normally this type of tea is not used for tea ceremonies. (Tea ceremonies require powdered green tea called matcha)

So where to get Sencha? Basically if there is no Japanese or Asian store around you that sells teas, you can always order from the Internet. If you live in the U.S.A. you can order over Amazon:

Sencha Tea, 5oz.

If however you live in Europe you can either order over Mount Fuji or from JapaneseGreenTeaOnline.

What you need for cooking Sencha:

• An earthernware teapot and cups. Of course, if you already have a glass teapot at home, just use that one. An example for a teapot with fitting cups:

  

• A thermometer is useful, as the temperature of the water has to be exactly measured.
• Sencha tea. The tea will probably look something like this:

  

Cooking instructions (2 cups):

1. Bring 250 ml (about 8 ounces) water to a boil (use normal tap water, don’t use filtered water).
2. Prepare two cups and pour the boiling water into the cups. This will simultanously warm the cups and cool down the water. Leave the water inside the cups until it reaches a temperature of about 79°C. (174.2 degrees Fahrenheit)
3. Put one teaspoon full of Sencha tea in your teapot and pour the water from the teacups into the teapot.
4. Let steep for about 1-2 minutes then pour the tea back into the cups.

The tea should have a light green to yellow color. Enjoy.

I’m actually never quite satisfied with the amount of vegetables and fruit that I manage to eat in a day. Normally one is supposed to eat five portions of fruit/vegetables a day of which at least three should be fresh. Beside there are other things like yogurt or nuts that are said to be good for the health too. The list of things a person should consume regularly gets quite long over time and actually one is never sure of the exact health benefits a certain type of food offers.

Overall I doubt that we can already determine exactly how good a certain aliment is for the human, but quite a lot of things are already known to us. And if there is one thing I love then it’s finding out how I can keep myself healthy and maybe even prevent illnesses by eating the right things and apparently a few little adjustments in the diet can already have a major effect.

There is a great site that offers a list of common foods and tells you exactly what nutrients they contain and what effects the particular aliment can have on you. I was quite surprised by a few things on the list and surprisingly I found myself browsing that list for about an hour because it was quite interesting So here is the address:

http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

The thing that impressed me the most (though I didn’t read through the whole list yet) is definitely green tea. I already knew that it could block cancer but what I didn’t know is that if consumed regularly it can protect from all illnesses including stroke, CVD and kidney diseases. But this is by far not everything, as you’ll be able to see on the list for yourself.
Other things that were quite amazing: tomatoes, peas, apples, yogurt, bell peppers. Although I already eat a lot of tomatoes and bell peppers, I’ll certainly try to include some more of the other aliments into my diet

I’m not quite certain about the green tea. I’m torn between trying to drink it pure, without sugar, just the way people drink it in Asia or actually sweeten it a little. I know that most Japanese will probably find the idea of sweetening tea ridiculous but as much as I’d love to appreciate tea in its basic form it’s just not possible. I’ve tried several times to brew a cup a sencha green tea (standard Japanese green tea) and drink it without sugar. Although it was always quite refreshing, the grassy and slightly bitter taste prevented me from brewing another cup the following day I guess that this is the result from a habit of being too used to sweetened beverages which has always been my problem. With sweetened beverages I don’t necessarily mean lemonade and coke and things like that but rather fruit juices and sweetened teas (like peppermint tea, a tea we drink quite a lot in Germany). I have a really hard time drinking anything that doesn’t have at least a slightly sweet taste… at some point I couldn’t even drink pure water without cringing.

Nevertheless this has improved over the years and I manage to drink water just fine now. However saying that I enjoy drinking unsweetened tea would unfortunately be lying. So if I want to drink green tea on a regular basis, I’ll probably have to make use of the sugar can Anyway, in my next post I’ll post about how to get sensha and how to brew it properly.

Ok, I promised a thorough explication on how to prepare, conserve/store and eat Japanese rice best.
There are basically two types of Japanese rice. One type is the normal rice used in daily cooking for savory dishes. The second type is called mochigome and is used for sweet rice cakes and mochi, due to its stickiness.

Once you’ve chosen the right type of rice (and I doubt that you’ll have much choice in the store you’ll buy your rice at so I’ll forgo the advice on a certain brand) make sure to store it in tightly secured containers in a cool place.

Now on to the equipment needed for preparing Japanese rice!

1. If you’ve never given this a thought before, you might consider purchasing a rice cooker. This might seem like something totally fancy and accessory to you but for me it has become indispensable since the very first week I bought it and not only because I like to cook Japanese. What’s great about rice cookers is that they don’t do ONLY rice cooking. When you get a rice cooker you can get a steamer/warmer at the same time meaning that you can prepare any type of rice (even western style), steam vegetables or keep them warm. Potatoes, eggs and carrots… basically anything that accompanies or composes a meal can be dropped into the rice cooker and you’re done. You can prepare whole meals with a rice cooker (watch out for more posts about this soon).
   Cooking rice (especially Japanese rice) without a rice cooker is fairly complicated and mostly you’ll struggle to get it just right. (before my rice was far from perfect) But with this nice little helper you just drop the rice inside and you can prepare the rest of your meal while the cooker does all the work for you. You can even steam vegetables at the same time which preserves vitamines and is good for the health. Also a rice cooker doesn’t have to be pricey, I’ve found this one on Amazon which resembles the one that I have and you’ll get a rice spatula, a measuring cup and steaming container along with the cooker when you order.
   
   
2. A rice spatula and a measuring cup are also very important utensils. The amount of water you add to the rice in proportion to the rice you want to cook must be measured carefully. Furthermore the rice spatula will help you get the cooked rice out of the rice cooker, without sticking and squeeshing the rice. Rice spatulas can be plastic or wooden. I prefer the plastic ones because they don’t take on any weird odors over time. But it’s all up to you.
   2 piece Plastic Rice Spatula
3. Other than that you’ll need a large bowl or any other container that allows you to wash rice in. Also if you don’t have a rice cooker, a regular pan/casserole/pot will do.
   

Now comes the real fun, your very first Japanese cooking lesson!
No don’t worry, it won’t be me holding it because I’m quite happy to give credits to the wonderful blog that taught me how to properly prepare rice. On I Was Just Really Very Hungry, Maki will show you how to cook rice with or without a rice cooker. It’s a great step by step guide (yes even the washing requires some training) that goes through all details and leaves nothing out, here you go:

Japanese Basics: Plain Rice / Sushi Rice

Yes the post also describes how to make Sushi rice, but I’ll get to that in another post. For now make sure to follow the instructions precisely. When you are done and when the rice is looking at you all deliciously, you might wonder what else you can do now that you’ve got real Japanese rice. Don’t worry, there is a great deal of things you can do with cooked rice, for example Onigiri (Rice Balls), Sushi, rice omelet, fried rice or rice soup. Mouth watering already? Please be sure to check back soon for more recipes

Well there is certainly nothing I enjoy as much as well prepared, steamy, Japanese rice. Japanese rice is a special variety of middle/short-grain rice that tends to stick just enough to be picked up by sticks but falls apart in your mouth. The variety itself is called Japonica Rice. Of course my first experience with Japanese rice was in a Sushi restaurant but nowadays my passion goes far beyond that. I discovered that Sushi actually only represents a fraction of the Japanese cuisine and that it takes so much more to compose a truly Japanese meal than a few pieces of Sushi.

About one year ago I started to experiment with Japanese ingredients and tried to reproduce authentic dishes. However until I managed to cook something that even remotely looked like in the cookbooks I had purchased, a lot of time passed and a lot of effort was made. All of this involved diving into a very obscure Chinese grocery store that holds a few Japanese ingredients and is unfortunately the only source of Japanese food here in Aix en Provence. After thorough research on the Internet, I thought I’d be prepared to enter the store and find the most important things quickly, but the reality was far from that. I was completely lost. I might add that my not speaking Japanese didn’t help at all. All ingredients had a unique and weird look, I literally had to pick up every jar and plastic bag containing food and carefully asses its contents.

The reason for my ignorance at the beginning was that quite frankly I didn’t know what to expect. When you read about Japanese food you hear fancy terms like dashi-stock, dried bonito flakes, pickled vegetables (oh no those are not any color you’d expect them to look like), aburage, pickled plums (yes salty), dried seaweed sheets (oh god there are so many…), various condiments like mirin (can just substitute that with sake, no?? well no, not really)… and so forth. If you, at this point, have no experience about Japanese staples, do you have any precise imagination of how these ingredients look? Well I didn’t and this is precisely why I started this blog, to explain Japanese food in easy terms, with illustrations and most importantly from the point of view of someone who wasn’t fortunate enough to ever experience Japanese culture first hand. (I hope that’ll change one day).

So let’s get back to the rice. If you truly intend to cook Japanese, rice would be the best thing to start with. Depending on where you live it will be more or less difficult to get a hold on this special rice. It really is different (significantly actually) from Basmati, Chinese, Western (long grain) rice, Risotto rice etc. this unfortunately means that you won’t be able to substitute it with anything. So when you set out to find this ingredient somewhere near you, try the following things:

• First check on the Internet if there isn’t an authentic Japanese store near you. Even Japanese restaurants sometimes have a little section where they sell groceries. From experience I can tell that Japanese shop holders will do their best to get quality rice into their shelves, which also means rice that hasn’t been harvested too long ago. They often have great advice if you ask them directly and contrary to people who never cooked Japanese before, they do know the difference between good and bad rice. Don’t be surprised if you pay about 2 € for a 1 kg bag… most Japanese staples are imported and hence quite expensive.
• If there is really no Japanese shop around you, check in Chinese, Korean or any other Asian shops. Sometimes these might be overwhelming with a lot of weird ingredients standing around, your best bet in that case is to ask directly if the shop owner isn’t too busy.
• If your search didn’t yield any results, your next stop is the biggest commercial center or supermarket that you have in town. Those also sometimes hold Japanese ingredients.
• If all of this doesn’t work for you, there is one solution that ALWAYS works, it’s ordering from the Internet. I personally don’t like ordering much, because it’s simply very costly with shipping and all, but as a last resort it definitely works. Some addresses to order Japanese ingredients: Mount Fuji and Japanese Kitchen are both UK based stores that deliver to most parts of Europe and maybe even to the U.S. // If you live in the U.S.A you can order from AsianFoodGrocer who deliver to any part of the U.S., but not to other countries // If you live in France you can also order from Asia Marché.

If finally you’ve managed to get a hold on Japanese Rice, you can move on to my next post, explaining how to cook, conserve and eat it best.