La petite biscotte

Contents

• Cherry Tomatoes
• Salmon Rolls
• Octopus Fried Wieners
• 1 Egg cut in a half
• Onigiri
• Broccoli

Today I decided to have a little fun with my bento. Usually I’m not making octopus wieners because I have to take my bento to university, but today we simply made a bento for eating lunch at home. Unfortunately I think I’m addicted to it now. I mean, I tried to shape a face for the octopus wieners from squished rice corns and sesame seeds and now the sausages have their own personality! By observing this endangered species closer, we notice clearly that the left octopus’s character and behavior seem to differ entirely from the right octopus’s. Smarty (on the left) seems to be the intelligent and cynical leader of the octopus family, contemplating the injustice of life itself. Meanwhile Dooley (on the right) has a rather blank expression, signalling that his mind seems to be mostly void of complex thoughts and that the sole purpose driving him in life is the quest for yummy food. Venturing further in our analysis, it is safe to say that Smarty seems to be the female octopus while Dooley is most certainly a male. As, you see, octopi always wander in pairs - like Pinky and the Brain - scheming and plotting to take the world over. Indeed, that is what truly happens under the lid of your lunchbox.

Biggie over at lunch in a box has posted a great tutorial on how to make octopus sausages, click here to view it. I tried it out today for the first time and it worked perfectly.

And here is a more or less informative video on how to make onigiri. I don’t say that because of the quality of the recording but as you’ll notice for yourself, making onigiri is mostly about practice until you get the shape right and of course keep those hands wet!

Oh, what a horrible picture… better ones to come soon - promise!

Contents:

• Japanese rice with chicken, carrots and aburaage
• Steamed brussel sprouts
• Finely shredded thin omelette
• Polenta crusted chicken

Today is a sinister day indeed as I decided to let go of the dear camera that has so far accompanied me on my culinary adventures. Unfortunately it’s been a while since I noticed that the camera was ailing. The pictures, as you probably have noticed, are completely blurred and I simply don’t manage to arrange enough lighting in the room for the camera to stop taking my movements into account. Even pictures that I take outside are not as sharp as I’d like them to be but I have to say that I’m not the least bit surprised. After all, I had bought the thing for 99 Euros at a department store and at the time I didn’t even think about using it for food photography. So yes, I decided that it was high time to stop disappointing myself and my readers with blurred pictures and as far as my investigations go, I found out that my dear husband is maybe going to offer me a new camera for my birthday on March 14 but pssst, it’s all top secret still!

The bento that you see above was assembled rather quickly as I’m still struggling to get enough time to even cook properly. What’s great about it is that you can prepare it with a minimum of dishes. I used the rice cooker to make the chicken/aburaage rice and I added the steaming container on top to cook the brussel sprouts at the same time. Apart from that I only used a frying pan for the polenta crusted chicken which I managed to coat and fry while the rice was cooking. You might wonder what aburaage is and sadly it’s one of those things you can only find in bigger Asian supermarkets. Basically it’s deep fried tofu slices which are often canned and preserved in a sweet-savory sauce (it’s those brown little bags that are used for Inari sushi). You can sometimes find them in shops that are specialized in Japanese ingredients but don’t be surprised if they ask 4-5 euros for a little can, but hey, once in a while…

I won’t add a recipe for the polenta crusted chicken because it’s really just chicken coated first in flour, then egg, then polenta (then fried). But when you choose the corn flour (or polenta) for this, be sure to choose the one with the smallest grains and be sure to cook it in enough oil, else the grains will be too crunchy.

Japanese Rice with Chicken, Carrot, Aburaage (Inspired by Bento Boxes, Japanese meals on the go)

• 2 cups uncooked Japanese rice, washed
• 1 small carrot, julienned
• 100g of aburaage, julienned
• 100g chicken, diced
• 3 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp mirin
• 1/2 Tbsp sake

Put the rice into your rice cooker and add the soy sauce, mirin and sake. Add enough water so it reaches the usual 2-cup mark. Place the other ingredients on top of the rice and turn on your rice cooker. Once the rice is cooked stir in the ingredients from the top and add seasoning to taste. Serves 4, sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds for example.

Today I tried a recipe from Naomi Kijima’s bento cookbook “Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go“. This is about the only bento cookbook from Japan that has been translated into English. The problem actually lies there, the book might be a big success in Japan but I imagine that people in western countries won’t find much use for it. The main issue being that many recipes simply use ingredients that you can’t get around here, even with the best Asian supermarket close-by: Fish cake, taro root, atsuage, nagenegi, konnyaku noodles, burdock root… I mean let’s be honest, I wouldn’t even recognize those ingredients if they’d bite me in the foot.

Still I don’t think that the book is useless at all. Actually you can use many recipes and simply make your own variations. For instance if I would substitute burdock root with celery (I’m sure celery doesn’t even come close to the taste but hey), my husband wouldn’t notice. And if he does reclaim burdock root he can try to search for it himself next time we go to our local Asian supermarket. (Good luck with that)

The book can be a great inspiration, especially if you’d like examples for bento that can be brought to a rather serious working environment. Miss Kitty boxes and pirate ship scenes with rice ball monsters and octopus wieners certainly have a kawaii effect, but if bento are really your every day meal at work you might have to resort to something more sober and the recipes in ‘Bento Boxes’ are a great example for that (minus burdock roots and the likes!).

(more…)

Contents:

• 1 cup cooked Japanese rice (with a little salt)
• Teriyaki fried chicken (1 chicken breast)
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumber, avocado, surimi salad with “sushi” dressing (scroll down for recipe)
• Tamagoyaki
• Maple syrup candy (which my mum in law brought back for us from Canada)
• Chocolate egg

Today I made a bento for us! What I like the most about bento is that it gives you full control over calories, portioning, flavours and assembly. There is nothing more dangerous for the health than running to university/school/work with an empty stomach and then chomping your way through burger/fries/pizza at noon (especially if one does that every day). Unfortunately those unhealthy dishes are about the only thing on the menu of our cafeteria; I’m not complaining though because I know that the limited budget doesn’t allow them to offer anything else.

But that’s precisely why I prepare lunches myself whenever I can. I used to be scared of the preparation time in the morning, but if you plan in advance, making a bento for two people can take as few as 10 minutes (sometimes more sometimes less). I started out by making bento once a month until I got used to the whole process, but then I came to enjoy making and eating bento so much, that I didn’t want to be without it anymore.

When you look at a bento box, the different compartments force you to think of a versatile menu because you never want to put the same thing in two compartments. And once you prepare something different for each compartment you automatically want to make it look neat/appealing. That’s exactly why there is something magic about lifting the lid of a bento box at noon

Utensils:

A Box
It doesn’t have to be an authentic bento box. Anything with a lid, large enough to hold a lunch can serve as container. However be careful, the box must be leak-proof and it must not be made of the kind of plastic that easily absorbs smells. Also if possible, the box should be microwave’able.
Most bento boxes can hold about 400-800ml and that’s about the capacity you should look for. At the beginning people often overestimate the size they need, but 500 ml is more than enough, especially given the fact that the whole space is carefully filled with 4-5 different dishes. Just try it out, you’ll see it stuffs pretty fast
If you want to buy a box nonetheless, please have a look here.
You might find much prettier examples on ebay or other specialized sites. The selection you can get over amazon is very limited.

A fork or chopsticks
What I usually do is: I buy a bag of plastic forks (those you use for parties) and either throw them away after I’m done or I wash and reuse them if they are stable enough. If you are lucky you’ll maybe find a set of fork/knife in a little case (sometimes they offer that for children), that’d be perfect. You can also simply take a normal fork/chopsticks and wrap them in a paper towel.

Rice cooker
This is not obligatory by any means and it strongly depends on what you want to pack in your bento boxes. It is simply very handy if you like Japanese rice. No hassle, you just drop the rice in the rice cooker and you are done. You can even steam a few vegetables at the same time (with the cooker). Sophisticated models even have a timer. Some examples can be found here.

Rectangular Frying Pan
If you’ve always liked those rolled omelets on top of sushi (they are called Tamagoyaki) then the easiest way to make them is with a rectangular frying pan. Try to get a non-stick version if you can, otherwise it can really get quite difficult.

More info
There are two wonderful blogs that specialize in everything around bento. The first is Lunch in a Box and the second one is Just Bento. You’ll find a lot of useful information as well as examples for possible dishes there.

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Ways to save time:

I’ll take this bento as example.

• Rice can be cooked in advance on the weekend. Just fill up your rice cooker with as much rice as it can hold, let it cook and then freeze in 1 cup portions, using plastic freezing bags. In the morning you can simply warm the rice up in the microwave which speeds things up greatly.
• Cut the chicken up in small pieces and marinate it overnight. That way you just need to fry it in the morning which takes about 10 minutes.
• You can cut the vegetables (beside the avocado) the evening before and refrigerate them in an air-tight container.
• If you don’t have sushi vinegar at home (needed for the salad), make it the evening before.
• The only thing you actually have to do in the morning is heat up the rice in the microwave, fry the chicken, make the omelette and cut the avocado to put the salad together. Then of course pack everything in your box and let the rice cool down a little before closing the lid of the box.
• Very important: Do not dress the salad immediately or it will turn soggy, best take a tiny bottle of vinegar with you and pour the dressing over the salad when you actually eat the bento.

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Cucumber, avocado, surimi salad with “sushi” dressing (serves 2)

• 1/3 cucumber
• 1 avocado
• 8 surimi sticks (imitation crab sticks)
• 2 Tbsp sushi vinegar (you can easily get that in supermarkets or asian shops, but if you don’t have any at home, scroll down for a recipe)

Cut the cucumber in quarters and remove the seeds. Cut the cucumber, avocado and surimi sticks in little pieces.
If you don’t have sushi vinegar: Simply mix 2 Tbsp of rice vinegar with 1 tsp salt and 1 Tbsp sugar, put everything into a small pan until the sugar dissolves then let cool down.
Dress the salad with the vinegar as soon as you want to eat it.

How to make California Rolls? Let’s start with the list of ingredients & utensils.

• 2 cups of Japonica Rice (There is no good substitute for this, check this post for more information)
• 4 cups of water
• 1/4 cup of sushi vinegar (You can get this in Asian/Japanese supersmarkets, but if you have troubles finding this -I’ll add a recipe later)
• 2 nori sheets - cut in half (If its full size nori sheets, which is mostly the case, fold it and halve it along the longer side)
• 1 ripe avocado (to check this, press a little with your finger on the skin… if it gives slightly the avocado is ripe, if your finger leaves a mark, it’s too ripe)
• toasted sesame seeds (for a greate visual appeal try to buy black and white sesame seeds, they don’t have to be toasted as you buy them, you can toast them yourself in a frying pan in five minutes easily)
• half a cucumber (don’t peel it, just wash it very well)
• imitation crab sticks (surimi), just buy a package of those, you’ll need about 5
• bamboo sushi rolling mat
• clingfilm

1. Cook the rice using these instructions. At the end of the article she describes how to make sushi rice, follow these instructions as well (when you are about to cook the rice, you do not have to substitute the water with dashi stock, I personally don’t like the smell of dashi stock at all and my sushi rice tastes just fine without it). Note: It is really important that you wash the rice. Many people omit this step but it actually helps giving the rice exactly the texture it needs, not too sticky. Also cooling the sushi rice can be painful but you’ll get used to it and as fancy as it might sound, the blow dryer is a huge help.
If you didn’t find sushi vinegar you’ll find the recipe for it at the end of her article as well.

2. While the rice dries, cooks or rests, cut all the vegetables length wise: Peel the avocado and halve it. Then slice down 5 mm thick stripes from the middle to the edge.
Halve the cucumber lengthwise and remove the seeds, then slice into 5mm thick stripes.
The crab sticks are best halved lengthwise as well.

3. In a frying pan toast the sesame seeds on middle heat and keep stirring them until they are golden brown.

4. Wash your hands carefully and put them under cold water, then let them wet and take about a handful of your prepared sushi rice. Dispense it over the whole norisheet by leaving about a cm space at the bottom. Don’t squeesh the rice; just keep your hands wet, that’s the whole trick to easily work and shape Japanese rice. Don’t put too much rice either, biggest mistake at the start is to put too much rice. You are supposed to still see some places of the norisheet through the rice. Don’t worry about evening out the rice, the bamboo mat’ll take care of that.

Try to always free your hands of the rice starch between each step and after washing them, leave them wet.

5. Now take about a teaspoon of sesame seeds and sprinkle them over the upper half of the rice on the nori sheet. After that grab the nori sheet by the upper and lower corner on the left or the right side and flip it upside down. The rice free area is still at the bottom.

6. Put two stripes of avocado in the middle of the sheet, followed by two and a half of the imitation crab sticks you cut before. Those are placed ABOVE the avocado slices. Just under the avocado slices position two cucumber stripes.

7. Now wet your hands and roll the sheet starting from below as firm as you can without squeeshing it. After having the role in front of you, position the clingfilm over the Sushi roll followed by the bamboo mat. Now gently press the mat with your hands around the roll to make it firm.

8. Remove the clingfilm and the mat and take a sharp knife with a wet blade. Cut the role in six pieces.

8. It’s quite hard to describe the procedure clearly. But luckily there is a video from an experienced Sushi chef, which will clear up a lot of questions you might still have: Check this video, (the video about California Rolls)

Ok this morning I got up 1 hour earlier than normally but I’m glad I did it, because check the result: my first bento!
Bento is a traditional way of preparing lunches for school/work in boxes that have several compartments to store the food carefully in order for the tastes not to get mixed up. But there is much more behind bento. Bento is also (as Japanese food in general) about the preparation. The appearance is supposed to be so appetizing that you feel like eating everything. For Japanese children for example a bento is the link between home and school. The mothers carefully prepare food for the child to feel accepted among friends and for the child to feel so appealed by the lunch that it will eat everything to the last rice grain. There are even bento meetings for parents and loads of magazines with ideas.

But bento aren’t only children meals Adults and people in general like to eat those whenever they aren’t at home. You can often buy those in shops or at train stations. Sometimes they contain special regional foods and then the bento are called ekiben (if I’m not mistaken ^^).
Taken from Wikipedia:

Types of bento

• Chūka bentō (中華弁当) are filled with Chinese food. The Chinese do not eat food that has become cold; this was invented in Japan.

• Kamameshi bentō (釜飯弁当) are sold at train stations in the Nagano prefecture. A bento is packed in a clay pot and cooked. This clay pot is a souvenir item.

• Makuno-uchi bentō (幕の内弁当) is a classic style of bento with rice, a pickled ume fruit (umeboshi), a slice of broiled salmon, a rolled egg, etc.

• Noriben (海苔弁) is the simplest bento, with nori dipped in soy sauce covering cooked rice.

• Sake bentō (鮭弁当) is a simple bento with a slice of broiled salmon (鮭, sake) as the main dish.

• Shidashi bentō (仕出し弁当) is made in a restaurant and delivered during lunch. This bento is often eaten at a gathering like a funeral or a party. It is usually packed with traditional Japanese foods like tempura, rice and pickled vegetables. A shidashi bento packed with European-style food is also available.

• Sushizume (鮨詰め) literally means “packed sushi“, and is a bento filled with sushi.

Other

• Hayaben (早弁), literally “quick bento”, is eating a bento before lunch, and having another lunch afterward.

• Hokaben (ホカ弁) is any kind of bento bought at a bento franchise called “Hoka-Hoka Tei”.

• Reitō mikan (冷凍ミカン) is a frozen mandarin orange often sold at a train station alongside ekiben. It was one of the earliest desserts sold onboard a train.

• Hinomaru bento (日の丸) was the name for a bento consisting of plain white rice with an umeboshi in the centre. The Hinomaru bento takes its name from the Hinomaru, the Japanese flag, which has a white background with a red circle in the centre. These bento were common in during the second World War, both because of the scarcity of food and the desire to and necessity of avoiding displays of excess while maintaining an image of stout. patriotism.

How to make bento? Well I will devote many many entries to this as I am reasearching stuff about bento like mad so stay tuned :p

I don’t claim to make perfectly traditional Japanese bento boxes, please don’t get me wrong I take a large part of Japanese recipes and check which ones I can cook that aren’t too time consuming (as I’m a full time student I don’t have much time) and that are doable with the ingredients that I can find here in the region I live in. (we only have one Asia-mart and they have one single shelf of Japanese ingredients… So not much choice for now - and ordering over internet is kinda pricey). Also I will fairly often use local recipes or western food that is well known (like chicken nuggets, country potatoes or taboulé).. but I will generally try to keep as much Japanese foods as I can and I will also try to keep the food as healthy as possible.

The obento you see above consists of Japanese cooked rice with roasted sesame seeds sprinkled on top of it. Moving on to the right we have teriyaki fried chicken (Teriyaki is a marinade for meat - will add a recipe at the end). Then cucumber slices and a little cornichon. Above we have chopped carrots and an onigiri (Japanese rice ball). Totally on the left we have a little fruit salad, a milk bottle of salad dressing (cute no? ^^) and two cherry tomatoes.

Recipes that you’ll need:

Onigiri

Makes 4 servings

• 4 cups of freshly cooked Japonica rice
• salt
• nori seaweed, cut in 4×2 cm stripes
• fillings (traditional fillings are Umeboshi (pickled plum),chopped pickles in general or dried bonito flakes… but as it is really hard to get a hold of any of these fillings here in France I like to use flaked cooked salmon, tuna seasoned with a tsp of soy sauce, omelet or any fried meat. The filling may not contain any liquid, it must be dry and it must be conservable up until you actually have lunch) note that fillings are not obligatory but if you put in some it should generally be fairly salty as it is accompanied by a lot of rice
• optional: black and white toasted sesame seeds

(If you don’t know how to cook Japanese rice: click here)
Clean your hands so that they are impeccably clean. Wet them under cold water and then rub a bit of salt with sesame seeds on your hand palms. Take 1 cup of cooked rice (while it’s still hot … test the degree of heat that you can still bear with your hands) and rapidly working, form a ball. Make a little, but deep hole with your finger in the middle of the ball of rice and add a teaspoon of filling. Now close the rice ball in such a way that the filling is embedded in the center; shape the onigiri either in a triangle shape or in a disc shape or in a rounded cylinder shape. To make triangles just cup your hands in an angle and rotate the onigiri until happy with the form. A sheet explaining this better: click.

Teriyaki fried chicken:

For the Teriyaki marinade

• 1/2 cup of soy sauce
• 1/2 cup of mirin (if you don’t find this ingredient you can substitute it by either sake and sugar or a sweet sherry)
• 2 tablespoons of sugar

Put all these ingredients together in a little pot, mix them and turn on low heat while stirring it. Let it simmer a few minutes and then turn off the heat. After the sauce has cooled down put it in a bottle and store in the fridge.

For the chicken:

Cut one chicken breast in bite sized pieces and pour about 3 tbss of teriyaki sauce over it. Now add salt and pepper and cover the chicken well with the sauce. Put it in the fridge to marinate for about an hour then fry in a pan. Watch out with the heat though as the sauce contains a lot of sugar it will easily burn.

Fruit Salad

• Fruits of your choice, cut in little pieces. For example: peaches, pears, cherries and grapes.
• 1/2 cup Honey
• 1/4 cup lime juice

Make a dressing from the honey and lime juice and pour over fruit pieces. Mix well, serve cold.

See you soon!

“Indian curry is really the best!”

“Nah, I love the curry they make at the Chinese restaurant not far from here…”

“Personally, I prefer Japanese curry :)”

“What??!!? Japanese don’t make curry!”

As a matter of fact Japanese do have a curry dish :p It’s actually one of the most popular dishes over there. According to some recent surveys the average Japanese family eats curry about 2-3 times a week. If right now you think “probably some variation of Indian curry, boring -_-”… you couldn’t be further from the truth. Japanese curry has a completely different taste. The texture, while thicker than other curry types, is much lighter and has a sweet distinct flavour that hits the taste buds when you eat it for the first time and you just go like “wow, I like!”. Surprisingly though, Japanese style curry is the least known over here.

Approximately 2 years ago, I ate my first curry. It was one of those premade curries from house that you heat up in the microwave and then just pour over freshly cooked rice. I found out later that the taste of that curry was far from what you can produce yourself, but still, I liked it so much that I started cooking curry every week. Bit by bit I improved and I managed to get it just right. The perfect curry!

I can say, without exaggarating, that Japanese curry is my favourite dish. By far. Even though I grow tired of just about any food if I eat it too often, I can’t get enough of this one. If you’ve never eaten Japanese curry before, I can only urge you to try it out. You are missing out on a piece of heaven on a plate!

To make Japanese curry, you need very simple ingredients. However there is one thing, that might be a little difficult to get: the curry roux. Curry roux is a sauce mix (mostly in the form of a dried block) which gives the dish its particular flavour and which thickens the sauce at the same time. Of course you can make this yourself (click here for a recipe) but let me tell you from experience: it’s tedious, takes long, requires a lot of trial and error and the final result will be far from what you can make with curry roux cubes. You can find curry roux from two different brands: S&B Foods Inc. and House Foods Coorp. Both offer good sauce mixes which you can buy in about any Japanese/Asian supermarket.

You can choose among three different levels of “heat”: hot, medium and mild. In America S&B’s Golden Curry seems to be more popular, whereas Japanese seem to like House’s Vermont Curry better. The choice is up to you, personally I like both equally. If you have troubles finding Japanese ingredients, please check out this post.

Japanese curry is actually always eaten with rice. The sauce, once done, is poured over one side of the plate while the rice is on the other side. I’ve found out that this way the rice actually doesn’t get mushy from the sauce and stays firm until you are done eating. You can use any type of western style rice, but I highly recommend you to eat this with authentic Japanese rice. It simply mixes perfectly.

Ingredients

• 3 cups of uncooked Japonica rice
• 1 box of curry roux (the one that yields 6 portions, however sizes differ so check the manufacturer’s instructions)
• 2 potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 onion
• two pieces of chicken breast (you can use beef, veal or shrimp if you prefer)
• water
• oil

______________

1. Wash the rice and cook it according to these instructions.
2. Cut the onion.
3. Cut the meat in bite sized pieces.
4. Heat up the oil in a pot at medium-high heat.
5. Cut the potatoes and carrots in bite sized pieces.
6. Once the oil is piping hot, put the onions in the pan and cook them while stirring. It is very important that you do not put the onions or the meat in the pot before the oil is hot. If the temperature is too low (aka if you don’t hear a psssssshhht when you drop the meat in the pot) the meat will turn to rubber.
7. Add the meat and continue to stir everything. Cook the meat with the onions until they get a nice brown color.
8. Add the potatoes and carrots. Cook those along with the rest for about a minute while stirring.
9. Now fill up the pot with water. The amount is specified by the manufacturer on the package of the curry roux. Cover the pot with a lid and let simmer for 20-30 minutes (again check package).
10. Finish the curry sauce according to instructions on the package. (Because Golden Curry cooking method differs from Vermont Curry… etc.)

Serves 6. Enjoy!

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.