Daigaku-imo

Daigaku-imo is recipe made with Japanese sweet potatoes (satsuma-imo), that have been given a sweet caramelized taste. The name of the recipe literary means 'university potato'. Originally this was a recipe that was popular among university students, because it is a cheap, sweet recipe full of calories. And I have to agree, it is a great snack (or meal) to eat when you are studying all day for your next test.
It's pretty easy to make. Which student would want to spend a long time in the kitchen while you need that time to study anyway?



Ingredients (circa 2p):

• 1 Sweet potato (Satsuma-imo)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 50ml water

Originally, most recipes call for more sugar and less water. We prefer it this way: sweet, but not overly sweet; and easier to make since you don't have the risk of the sugar caramelizing too fast and getting hard before it is on the potatoes. 

Cut the potato into small, bite-size pieces. Heat some oil in a fry-pan and bake the potatoes till they are soft.

Mix the soy sauce, sugar and water together and heat in a small saucepan.
When it starts simmering, add the potato-pieces in the saucepan. The saucepan will now be really full, no problem, you just have to stir really well so that the sugar-mixture will attach to all potato-pieces.
When all of the sugar-mixture has been attached to the potato-pieces, you put off the heat, and serve the daigaku-imo. Put them on a plate and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

It tastes good warm, so perfect as a side dish. But it also tastes good cold, so make some extra and put the rest in your bento-box (for when you are studying at the library the next day ;)

Daigaku-imo

 

Pumpkin (kabocha) cookies

This time we want to share a recipe that can be enjoyed in many different ways! It's nice to eat as a snack, a great taste and healthy cookie. But we also enjoy it very much to eat as a side dish in our bento boxes. Easy to make a bunch of cookies and then take them with you on several days.



Ingredients:

• half Japanese pumpkin (we have never tried it with non-Japanese pumpkin, so we don't know if it will work just as good)
• flower
• topping: sesame seeds

Japanese pumpkin

Remove the seeds from the pumpkin (easily with a spoon), and cut them to small pieces. Let them cook for about 10 minutes.

Cut into pieces

Cooking

Put the cooked pumpkin pieces in a bowl and add the flower. You will need enough flower so that the flower mixed (smashed) together with the pumpkin will feel very soft and kneadable. We normally use around 7 (big) table spoons of flower to reach this. But you can just try and add more flower till you're satisfied with the result.

Cooked pumpkin

Result of mixing the cooked pumpkin pieces with flower

Then, make round flat shaped cookies from the pumpkin-flower mix. It will be much easier if you keep your hands wet, so it doesn't stick to your fingers to much. Add sesame seeds on top, and make sure stick to the cookie.

Put on over roster (maybe use a sheet of baking paper first!)

Put them in the oven, and bake them till they turn a little brown. In our oven, it takes approximately 10-15 minutes on 200 degrees C.

Baking the cookies

'How-to-make' video :)

 Let them cool down, and enjoy!

Simmered daikon

Daikon is a big white, but mildly flavoured, Japanese radish. It actually looks like a big, white carrot, and Daikon literary means 'big root' in Japanese. We had actually no experience at all cooking with radish, so even though we saw Daikon for sale at all supermarkets we had never bought one. We didn't know what to do with it. Eat it raw? cook, fry or broil? However, we were feeling experimental and wanted to try something new. So we bought a daikon and tried some daikon recipes we heard taste very good. And indeed, we have come to love daikon

One (very big) daikon

This time we want to share a favourite daikon recipe of ours, Japanese Simmered Daikon. This recipe makes for a great side dish, but is also nice to be enjoyed as a warm snack on cold winter days.

Daikon is apparently really healthy, and we heard it is even a great remedy against hangovers! We haven't tried it ourselves, but please let us know if you find this actually works.

Ingredients (2p):

1/2 daikon
1 tbsp dashi powder
1 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp soya sauce

First, peel the skin off the daikon and slice it to pieces of approximately 1 cm thickness. Then, cut these pieces to quarters.

 

Daikon cut to pieces

Fill a fry pan with approximately 0,75 cm water, and mix the water with the dashi powder (1 tbsp), mirin (1 tbsp) and soya sauce (2 tbsp). Put on the heat, and bring it to boil.
Then, add the daikon pieces to the pan, and divide evenly on the water. Lower the heat, and cover the pan with a lid and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. After 15 minutes you can turn the daikon pieces, so both sides simmer evenly.

Daikon pieces added to the pan

Simmer with lid

 After about 30 minutes (or when all the water in the pan is gone) your simmered daikon is ready!

Finished simmered daikon (no water left)

 Serve and enjoy!

Japanese simmered daikon

You can view the cooking process on our youtube channel!