Recently we came across a strange looking fruit (or was it a vegetable, we were not sure when we saw it) in our local supermarket. Looking at the sign, we learned that is was a 'uri' or うり in Japanese. Which still didn't bring us any further in knowing what kind of food it was. However, is was on sale and therefore very cheap, and the friendly lady of the supermarket ensured us that it tastes very good and was a very popular product today among customers. So, we decided to buy it.
Our uri
At home, we looked it up in our dictionary, and it turned out that it is a kind of melon. We therefore decided not to prepare it but just eat it raw as a side dish. We peeled the skin, and cut is into bite sizes pieces. You can either remove the seeds or eat them just as you would with a cucumber.
After we had tasted it, it turned out the taste and the texture is actually like a mix between a cucumber and a normal melon! Very surprising, but very delicious indeed. It makes for a very good and refreshing (especially in summer) side dish, so from now on, every time our supermarket is selling uri's we will buy them
Time for another cake made by the rice cooker! Our previous chocolate cake recipe was a big success, so this time we want to share another favourite of our cake recipes. Again it is very easy to make in the rice cooker.
This recipe is for Japanese sweet potato (satsuma-imo) cake. We have already posted several dinner recipes made with satsuma-imo (sweet potato rice & steamed sweet potato), but it's sweet taste makes it an excellent ingredient for cake too.
Ingredients (makes a cake with approximately 19cm diameter, and 3 cm height):
125 gr flour
2 eggs
1 tbsp sugar
50 ml (coleseed) oil
100 ml milk
1 tsp baking powder
1 satsuma-imo
Mix the flour, eggs, sugar, oil, milk, and baking powder together until the batter is smooth. Cut the sweet potato in small pieces, and add to the batter, then mix together.
Sweet potato cut into small pieces
Sweet potato cake batter in the rice cooker pan
Put the batter in your rice cooker, and make sure the potato pieces are evenly divided. Put the rice cooker on cake-modus,
and turn on for 30 minutes.
After the rice cooker has finished, wait until the pan and the cake have
cooled down. Then you can turn over the pan and with a little shake the
cake will come out perfectly.
Finished Sweet potato cake
The cake will be a little heavy, but that makes it also perfect to enjoy at a picnic or put in a bento box.
(recap from last cake recipe: No need to grease the rice
cooker-pan, it already has (should have) a
very good anti-stick layer and the cake will come out easily. Our rice
cooker has a cake option in the menu, which will ask for the
amount of time you want to cook your cake. All rice cookers are probably
different, so check the options in the manual. Apparently, you may even
be able to make cake in a rice cooker with only an on-button, but we
haven't tried that so we can't say anything about it.)
Now that the summer is getting warmer and warmer, it's time to try some seasonal recipes specially for hot days! This time we bought a goya (bitter melon), a vegetable that looks like a strange cucumber with bad skin, but tastes very different! It's has an extreme bitter taste, so beware when buying/tasting.
It's full of vitamins and therefore very healthy, and it is said that it helps your body withstand the heat of the summer. Most recipes with goya come from Okinawa, Japan's most southern region, so they should know what works best against the heat.
This time we tried making a simple variation of Chanpuru, a stir-fried dish
from Okinawa that normally contains vegetables, tofu, and/or some meat.
It is very often made with goya, which is therefore (not surprisingly)
called 'goya chanpuru'. Because is has such a bitter taste, we prefer not to eat a whole meal of it, but rather prepare it as a side dish.
Ingredients (2p):
1/2 Goya
clove of garlic
2 eggs
the outside of the goya
Cut the goya in half lengthwise, and remove the inside and seeds with a spoon. Then, slice the goya thinly.
Goya slices, with seeds removed
Heat some oil in a fry-pan. Add the goya slices, and season with pressed garlic. Fry until the goya softens. Then, add two eggs to the mixture, and stir till the eggs are baked.
Stir-fried goya with egg
Serve, on a plate. If the taste is still to bitter, it can help to add (a little bit of) mayonnaise, because that will soften the taste. It also took us a while to get used to the taste, but once that happens it actually tastes quite good.
Now you are ready to survive the summer heat :)
One of our favourite Japanese meals is Okonomiyaki: Japanese pancake or Japanese pizza, or maybe more like Japanese omelet. No matter how you describe it, Okonomiyaki is delicious!
There are many variations in the Okonomiyaki recipe, the two main 'styles' come from two different regions in Japan: Osaka style & Hiroshima style. When we were travelling through Japan we took the opportunity to try both styles in their original area. And both are insanely delicious. Basically, Osaka style mixes all the ingredients together in one think pancake, while Hiroshima style cooks the ingredients in different layers on top of each other and adds some noodles to the recipe. Then there are endless variation on filling of your okonomiyaki: beef, pork, shrimp and/or other seafood, etc. You can try many differences!
This time we will share our recipe of the Osaka style Okonomiyaki: all mixed together to form on big pancake. We decided to make it a shrimp okonomiyaki, but fill free to substitute that with other ingredients you like.
Ingredients (2p):
100 gr flour
160 ml water mixed with dashi powder
2 eggs
300 gr cabbage
For the filling (can be substituted for other flavours):
150 gr shrimps
For topping:
(Kewpie) mayonnaise
Okonomiyaki sauce (or you can use Tonkatsu sauce or Worcester sauce)
Bonito flakes (Katsuobushi)
The video guide:
Mix the flour, dashi-water and eggs together.
Cut the cabbage in small long pieces (approximately 3 cm by 0,5 cm).
Add the slices cabbage to the batter and mix together.
Add shrimps, and mix together.
Heat some oil in a small fry-pan, divide the Okonomiyaki-batter in two portions and put the first portion in the fry-pan. Do the shaping on low fire and make sure the ingredients are well spread over the pancake/omelet. Bake on medium fire until it becomes a firm structure (takes about 6-8 minutes).
Then comes the hard part: turning it over. You can try doing it how it is supposed to be: flipping it over with a big spatula. It never really works for us. We end up with lots of small disintegrated pieces of Okonomiyaki. Therefore, we found a perfect, and easy way. Take another fry-pan, and just turn the okonomiyaki over into this other fry-pan. Much easier. (see our video for clear instructions)
You can start using the first fry-pan to make the second Okonomiyaki.
When it has finished cooking, put it on a plate.
Add mayonnaise and Okonomiyaki-sauce (preferably in pretty looking stripes or other shapes :)
We have found a new way to use our rice cooker: to make cake! We love the easiness and convenience of the rice cooker for cooking many delicious meals, and we love cake, so combining the two is perfect. It makes a delicious, and very easy to make cake!
We now have summer vacation from school, so lots of time to experiment with making different kind of cakes, and just in time so we can eat them for our birthdays :)
Making cake in the rice cooker is truly very easy and fast, and the taste of the cake is great. We will share our favourite recipe to make cake from the rice cooker, plain cake or easily converted to make chocolate cake (our absolute favourite taste)
Piece of chocolate cake, topped with extra chocolate sauce
Ingredients (makes a cake with approximately 19cm diameter, and 3 cm height):
125 gr flour
2 eggs
1 tbsp sugar
50 ml (coleseed) oil
100 ml milk
1 tsp baking powder
For chocolate cake: add chocolate powder or syrup to taste
Mix the flour, eggs, sugar, oil, milk, and baking powder together until the batter is smooth. For the chocolate-cake you can now add the chocolate powder or chocolate syrup, and mix with the batter.
Mixing the batter
Adding chocolate syrup
Chocolate cake batter in the rice cooker pan
Put the batter in your rice cooker. No need to grease the rice cooker-pan, it already has (should have) a very good anti-stick layer and the cake will come out easily. Put the rice cooker on cake-modus, and turn on for 30 minutes.
Our rice cooker has a cake option in the menu, which will ask for the amount of time you want to cook your cake. All rice cookers are probably different, so check the options in the manual. Apparently, you may even be able to make cake in a rice cooker with only an on-button, but we haven't tried that so we can't say anything about it.
Finished rice cooker cake
After the rice cooker has finished, wait until the pan and the cake has cooled down. Then you can turn over the pan and with a little shake the cake will come out perfectly. (Something we have experienced as much harder when you bake cake to traditional way in the oven!)
Rice cooker cake, ready to eat!
Top it with some whipped cream, chocolate sauce, jelly, or just enjoy plain!
Gyudon is a very popular dish in Japan. You can get a standard bowl for about 380 yen at one of the big chains in almost every street in Japan. Since these restaurants are often open 24 hours, it is a dish not only popular for people seeking a fast an cheap meal, but also a popular midnight snack for those coming back from late work or drinking.
Gyu means 'cow', and 'don' means (rice) bowl, so it's a recipe for rice topped with (simmered) beef, served with a mildly sweet sauce and unions, and often topped with pickled ginger. Although the Gyudon shops will mostly be considered selling 'fastfood', it is actually a quite healthy meal. But, of course we do not always want to eat out when we feel like eating gyudon, so we searched for ways to prepare it ourselves. Very easy, and tastes just as good (or even better!) than the Gyudon served in the numerous gyudon-shops. And much cheaper too :).
Ingredients (2p):
Rice for 2 persons
around 250 gram thinly sliced beef
1 onion
200 ml water mixed with 1 tbsp dashi powder
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin
optional for topping: ginger and sesame seeds. Usually benishoga (pickled red ginger) is used, however, we prefer to use fresh grated ginger as topping.
First, cut the onion in wedges and cut the beef in thinly, slim slices. And cook the rice as usual.
Then, is a small fry-pan, mix the dashi-stock (200 ml water mixed with dashi powder) with the soy sauce and the mirin, while bringing it to simmer. Add the onion pieces and let them simmer for a couple of minutes. Lastly add also the beef, mix together with the onions and let the total simmer for a couple minutes until the beef has gained it's light-brown colour.
Simmering the onion wedges
Mixing in the beef
Divide the rice into two bowls, and add the beef-onion and sauce on top. Now for topping, grate fresh ginger (feel free to just use the more traditional pickled red benishoga) and add on top and spread some sesame seeds.
Home-made Gyudon
You have made your own bowl of gyudon, no need to visit the Gyudon restaurants anymore. Enjoy!
