Japanese Food

[Straylight]

Anyone here into Japanese cooking?
I just went to a supermarket in Chinatown and brought back loads of ingredients, lots of tofu/miso soup and Japanese rice...

I just had a go at cooking some miso.. its well tasty!

[Technomancer]

When I can, although I typically go to the Korean store downtown. I'll leave the sushi-making to the experts however. Anyways, these days though I don't do much of any sort of cooking. My housemates are slobs and the kitchen is rarely in a usable state. Hopefully, I'll find an apartment by the summer.

[Straylight]

My housemates are slobs and the kitchen is rarely in a usable state.

LOL, that situation sounds very similar to mine

[shooraijin]

I wish I could *prepare* Japanese food, but I sure do like eating it!

They sell some nice-looking udon in the shops here, and some of the speciality stores have most stuff available, but I just don't eat enough at home to make stocking up on it economical. Better to eat out, they do a better job and there's no need to wash dishes.

[Straylight]

I wish I could *prepare* Japanese food, but I sure do like eating it!

The miso packs that they sell im my Chinatown shop contain the bits as well, it's basically import Japenese instand miso... can't go wrong ^_^y

I added a few other bits to it too (homemade tofu and some pring onions) because I didn't know how to cook it and I was using an internet recipe. I've got a Seaweed Soup pack too... could be fun

[The Silence]

A friend of mine likes to make sushi... I should get him to teach me... ^^

[cbwing0]

I wish I could *prepare* Japanese food, but I sure do like eating it!

Same here. Then again, I would like to know how to cook in general.

[Heaven's Cloud]

The only thing that I have cooked in the japanese way was rice. It is like egg's and other stuff in it, it's very good.

I like some Japanese food, like Habachi Chicken and rice, but not sushi. Well it's okay.

[redkorn]

i cant cook anything, but i do love too eat japenese food!

[Angelchick]

i can make a few japanese things. like spam musabi and i know how to make a really good salad that has somen noodles and i love udon(sp?) noodles. Japanese food is so good.

[Razgriz]

I like Japanese food, but I haven't had the opportunity to cook.

[Straylight]

If I didn't cook I'd starve or live off junk food

[Ashley]

Homeade tofu? Noz as much as I trust you, that worries me lad.

As for me, we have a great little Japanese restaraunt in Kemah called Ichibon. And a Thai menu at work that I'll order off of. 'Nuff said. (read: Ash does not cook asian foods). My mother got a Wok for christmas, and she tried really hard to make good fried rice...but it came out...well...mushy and gross.

[shooraijin]

My mom makes a unique fried rice with rice, peas, onions, eggs, bacon, carrot bits and whatever else she feels like adding to it. A meal in itself but unfortunately not friendly to her diabetic diet, so she doesn't make it much these days. *sighs*

[LorentzForce]

miso isn't strong enough for me. so, like a korean would do, i put about 3~4 times the amount of 'miso' into my 'soups'. it's not 'soup' anymore, it's more like... main dish. oh wait, that's main bowl.

oh yeah, making tofu isn't TOO hard. it's just that, most times it won't be 'nice', because it requires some techniques to master. because of that, my house just buys tofu. oh, and fresh, steaming tofus, you can eat it raw straight away, if the tofu has no additives in it to make it last longer.

now making miso at home. now THAT's a challenge. only my grandma knows how to do it properly... i can remember cleaning all those maggots when one of the miso blocks weren't prepared properly...

what i'd give for a plate of sushi right now... that or raw fish. same thing.

[Megami Tsunami]

My mom makes miso soup for me almost every morning. I know this isn't really proper, but I like to stuff a bunch of steemed rice into my miso bowl and poor the miso soup over it. Then it sorta turns into a bowl-full-of-mush deal. I'm such a rice freak, so I can't help myself when I have miso and rice in my house! Anyone heard of the big ingredient for miso soup called "Hon Dashi"? My mom's got a big box of that stuff.

Another thing, the one thing I look forward to every New Years of my life is making mochi. My mom and I bust out the mochi machine and start making a bunch of that stuff for the holiday. Gooy sweet rice is my way of celebrating New Years ^.^ Is anyone going to be having that?

[Mimichan]

Well, I love to cook and I've done some Asian-style cooking; but, I haven't tried to actually prepare a Japanese meal yet. I would love to be able to make my own sushi! It's so expensive and I rarely get to eat it anymore. Udon is good..Hibachi grilled foods and teriyaki is awesome..the onion soup is good too. But miso? I don't know..I tried it once and it tasted like dishwater. Perhaps I just had a bad experience. All in all I am a pretty big fan of Japanese food..or just Asian food in general. ... Mochi sounds interesting (think I'd like to try that)^_^

[Bobtheduck]

日本しょくはかわいいです。

[button="off topic"]Man, it took me FOREVER to find those kanji in the Character map... That*s the Chinese list, not the Japanese list, so there*s something like 50,000 of them... And, they*re not in the Japanese order, instead they are grouped (I*m assuming) by primary radical... Thankfully I finally figured out that the book kanji had tree as a root... It took me forever to find the *Ni* part, though...[/button]

I've only really had Teriaki Chicken... Japanese food has too many veggies for me... I like watching veggies sing and dance and reference monty python, not eating them...

[button="off topic"]Any 日本人 out there that can tell me what these characters mean? You can reply in a PM if you want... ゑゐゎぁぃぅぇづぢ the first two are listed as we and wi, the next one is a SMALL wa... Then, the small hiragana vowels , finally a tsu with the voice marks and a chi with voice marks so what would you use those for?[/button]

[LorentzForce]

sushi? that's easy! feel free to follow along my simple step by step instructions.

1) get a live fish.
2) chop its head off and gut it. it's skill if you can go to number 3 without doing number 2, but we'll ignore that part for now, taking you never did make sushi before.
3) using a very sharp and accurate knife cut the flesh off the fish.
4) right now, steam some rice. easily by getting rice in a hot pot, pour water, and cook it just enough that water disappears and soft and fluffy rice is left over.
5) continue to slice the fish, until you have rows of fish flesh.
6) when the rice is ready, get one slice of flesh, and wrap it to the rice. if you want, get slight amount of vinegar into rice; makes it less plainer.
7) repeat until either rice runs out or fish runs out.
8) put it on a plate and eat it. preferably with wasabi or soy-sauce, or both, or neither.

just make sure you pick the right fish. any of them can be used to make sushi, but in beginning stages it's good to use tuna first, because they are BIG in size, unlike some other fish that barely has anything next to their bones.

if you did it correctly, you should get very nice plate of sushi for not much of a cost. of course, most people want like 3 fish as sushi, and most fish that taste good raw are expensive, but that's not the point.

now, if you want those sushi with seaweed covering it, that's even easier! but i'll give that out later. can't be bothered to type any further...

[Straylight]

Raw fish ? o_O?

[Megami Tsunami]

maguro (raw tuna) is the best!

[Bobtheduck]

Raw fish ? o_O?

That would be sashimi... Sushi isn't even always fish, let alone always being raw...

[Straylight]

Cool

[Technomancer]

Hmm..sushi. There's a couple of good places here in Hamilton to get it, the best is probably "Osaka" on Barton Street. I'm leery of plum wine though. I had some really good stuff once (in Whistler), but what's locally available here is truly awful. Sake's pretty bad too, I don't know how anyone can drink the stuff.

[Straylight]

Hmm, there's some shops that sell that too, might have to give it a try..

[LorentzForce]

i like raw fish. mmm, fresh meat...

sashimi becomes sushi when you put a ball of rice under it. hehehe unless it's the seaweed sushi, the one with sushi rolled around it. then it's sashimi with ball of rice around it.

[Azier the Swordsman]

There is a Japanese restuarant next door to where I work which I used to love to eat at... Unfortunately, the manager shoplifted the place I work. (A grocery store) What he would do is grab some plastic bags from the front end, head through the store getting what he needed while sacking his own groceries, then walk out without paying. Eventually store management got wise to him and had some people waiting for him one day. His excuse? "Oh, I forgot to pay." A co-worker who works in the meat department had told me previously that he had seen the restaurant selling OUR meat at higher prices... It's a shame, really, cause they have some really good food.

[chibi_chan]

i've only had ramen so far but i wanna try nikoman somday

[Mithrandir]

Whoa. That's just wrong, Chris. As for nihongo no "food" I just finished the world's largets obento. (OK, it's not that big, but I've never finished one before. Too full, can't breath! *huff huff huff*

[Straylight]

What I always find amazing is those seaweed [wakame] soup sachets. When you add water, the seaweed increases in size by about 6 times in around 2 minutes.