日本 の クッキング Japanese Cooking

Rhett here with a quick look into everything about us cooking in Japan.

It took many months to fine tune cooking up our various Japanese meals. It was very difficult at first to know when and where to get certain types of food. There are three supermarkets in our town and although they share over 80% of their products, the last 20% can make a big difference. Luckily the switch to gas over electric wasn't so hard since I often cooked with gas on boyscout camping trips.

Behold the mighty DAIKON! (or "large root" in English) And cheap Chinese garlic!

The daikon is an extremely large radish, generally the size of your forearm. Though neither of us like radish, the daikon's taste is extremely mild. Every once in a while, the top fourth (with a slightly green tint) will pack a powerful spicy radish punch which can be a nice change for cooking. In the right season, it can cost $1.50, providing plenty of vegetable cooked or raw.

There is definitely no shortage of vegetables in Japan! Spinach and several other leafy vegetables are very popular. Root vegetables are probably the most abundant. Carrots, onions, lotus root, bamboo root, and things most westerners have probably never even seen. Additionally, there are probably five or six different types of potatoes at any given time.

 

Meat can be expensive at times but overall not too bad. We have made hamburgers several times, usually with garlic, ginger, and soy sauce. The more expensive meat here is extremely tasty, but we usually only enjoy it on special occasions. We also indulge in American type hotdogs from time to time. Although half the meat here is from the sea, neither of us really care for fish, squid, octopus, whale, or any of the stranger things from the sea. The biggest disappointment is the lack of bacon. It is non-existent. Here we have some chicken for about $2.

 

Cheese is a rarity here. Luckily, we do have the bright orange craft singles that I can put on my burger, and Alexis and I of course enjoy a grilled cheese sandwich from time to time. Parmesan exists, but is extremely small and expensive. Luckily TheFlyingPig.com has one pound parmesan shakers for about $10. We usually buy two every three months.

The drink scene here is amazing. They have plenty of different fruit juices which is all we ever care to drink. If we were more into soda, we might be a little bit disappointed, though there are a few stars in Japan like melon soda.

Here we have some cream melon soda and the average milk carton. Milk is a little expensive, but worth it. And of course we always keep a giant bottle of soy sauce around.

 

 

Fruit is a disappointment. Most fruit is extremely expensive. Cantelopes and watermelons generally go for about $20 and they are much smaller than their American counterparts. Any fruit bigger than your fist will generally be at least $10. Strawberries come in packs of nine, neatly layed out... for about $5. The cheapest (so most bought by us) are bananas and kiwis, which prices sometimes rival US prices. I also eat an avocado every once in a while. Luckily, we recently found a store that sells frozen strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and mango for a great price. We shall be having many smoothies from these. We try to make up for the lack of fruit with apple and orange juice.

 Other items common in our cooking is tofu, miso paste, dashi, ume (pickled plum), different types of seaweed, and the like.

One of the advantages of being here is getting freshly packaged asian foods that are normally reserved for the frozen isle, like this gyoza!

Buying in bulk is a must from time to time. There are a few cheap bulk items in specialty shops but for the most part, we buy bulk from TheFlyingPig.com which flies American Costco goods to Tokyo where we can purchase them online for a very good price. Among the items we regularly get are parmesan cheese, bagels, fruity snacks, dried fruit, oatmeal, cereal, poptarts, beans, olives, spaghetti sauce, and a few other snack items that give us a taste of home.

Here we have a 4.5 pound jug of honey. We bought this at a supermarket when we first got here... we're only half way through.

 

Snacks are quite plentiful and diverse here. America has more of everything, but Japan sports a few snacks and candy that I would put in my top ten.

Breakfast is usually simple. Alexis often has to wake up early for work and time is limited. The most common breakfasts are pancakes, egg sandwiches, eggies in a basket, toast and boiled eggs. With pancakes, we usually throw in some fruit. Here I've made some kiwi pancakes.

Lunch is where we do our separate thing. Alexis usually brings some ramen, a peanutbutter sandwich, rice balls with ume, or a ham sandwich to school. I usually take lunch as a chance to eat something she doesn't care for, like spaghetti with tomato sauce and olives, tuna, avocado, salsa, etc.

If she's feeling like a more diverse meal at lunchtime, she sometimes makes something like this (also know as a bento):

Dinner is where most time is spent cooking. On late nights I usually keep it simple and we have either rice, spaghetti, or asian noodles. When we cook rice, I often cook up some vegetables in soy sauce with a little olive oil and butter to put over the rice the first night. Then the next night I take the left-over rice and make fried rice with carrots, eggs, green onion, green peas, etc. Spaghetti is usually always lemon/butter spaghetti (since alexis doesn't like tomato sauce on spaghetti, only pizza, go figure). I add in large amounts of sage, rosemary, and oregano with freshly diced garlic and then we coat it with a thick layer of parmesan. It's extremely tasty. Asian noodles generally just consist of some sort of salty soy base, with mounds of vegetables stir-fried with it.

Usually we have something different than the main three at least once a week. Over the months we've learned how to cook quite a few delicious meals more reminiscent of US cuisine. Hamburgers, hotdogs, parmesan chicken, pizza, garlic bread, and too many other things to list here.

Here I partake a tasty taco with hand-made garlic flour tortillas.

Here we made a hawaiian pizza with onions. It turned out wonderfully.

And of course there's the seasonal must haves. Thanksgiving was a week ago and we had to cook up some pumpkin pie. Though Japan does not have canned pumpkin, they have the perfect winter squash to replace it. This type of pumpkin is actually perfect for pumpkin pie and is extremely abundant all year round.

We scooped it out and saved the seeds to make roasted pumpkin seeds. If you've never had a fresh pumpkin pie, I recommend it. Though not as pretty as your average pie, it was some of the best I've ever had. The horrible aesthetics are due mainly to the fact that we only have a toaster oven to use. We actually had to use a small cake pan to do the job as a normal pie tin would not fit.

As well, we made sweet potato casserole with Japanese sweet potatoes. While tasty, the color isn't what we are used to and again... the whole toaster oven deal makes it look less than appetizing. But again I assure you: it was quite tasty.