February 2007

ganmodoki1.sidebar.jpg

Ganmodoki or hiryouzu are small deep-fried fritters made of tofu and various ingredients. They are either eaten as-is or cooked in a broth. They are used as a meat substitute in sho-jin ryouri, vegan buddhist cuisine. (They are supposed to taste like deer meat, though they don't at all.)

Ganmodoki is sold pre-made in supermarkets, in the refrigerated section, and is usually eaten in an oden, a sort of stew of various fishcakes and such. But store bought ganmodoki, which has the texture of a sponge, is nothing like freshly made ganmodoki. Once you have tried a freshly made, piping hot ganmodoki, it's just about impossible to think about saving them for later.

I have tried baking these or pan-frying them instead of deep frying, but the texture just isn't the same. It just demands that crispy-crunchy delicate crust given by the oil. If it's any consolation, they don't really absorb much oil.

Yamaimo

One ingredient that gets omitted in a lot of English-language ganmodoki recipes is yamaimo, often called Japanese Yam. It is a root vegetable that is tremendously viscous in texture, sort of like the inside of an okra. It gives a sort of bouncy yet light texture to whatever it's added to. You can find fresh yamaimo in the produce section of Japanese grocery stores, cut into sections and wrapped in plastic. It's quite expensive but you usually only need a little bit of it, and keeps quite well in the refrigerator well as long as you re-wrap it in plastic to prevent the ends from oxidizing. The cut ends were traditionally dipped in some fine sawdust for storage. You may also be able to find yamaimo powder (Note to European readers - Japan Centre in the UK carries this). Regular grated potato can be used as a substitute if you can't find yamaimo - it gives a different texture but still adds that sort of bouncy quality. It has to be grated to a fine pulp, not into shreds.

The other ingredients

All the additions to ganmodoki are there to add texture, umami, or both. You can vary it quite a bit by adding things that capture your imagination. You can even turn it into a more Western-flavored item by adding things like green peas, finely chopped and cooked mushrooms, and so on, and eating them with a bit of Worcestershire sauce or even ketchup. However, to my mind the traditional Japanese flavor is the best.

Filed under:  japanese vegetarian tofu vegan

A lot of Japanese dishes are quite subtly flavored to start with, and are eaten dipped in a simple soy sauce based dipping sauce. You're probably familiar already with the wasabi + soy sauce combination used for most kinds of sashimi and sushi, but there are a few others. Which sauce goes with which dish really seems to depend as much on tradition as anything, though certain combinations just fit better than others. The ratio of flavoring to soy sauce is a matter of personal taste in most cases.

Whenever using a dipping sauce, try not to dunk whatever you are eating into it. The common sushi eating mistake made is to dunk the rice side into soy sauce - this not only makes the rice grains go all over the place, often down your front, but absorbs way too much soy sauce. Turn the sushi over and dip the fish just a bit instead. (I tend to think that this rice-dunking is why a lot of the finer sushi restaurants nowadays serve their sushi pre-seasoned, needing no dipping.)

Here are the most commonly used dipping sauce combinations:

Filed under:  basics japanese ingredients

guinessmarmite.jpg

Wow, look at the gorgeous black and white special edition Guinness Marmite jar! Limited to a run of 300,000 jars, this special blend of Guinness and Marmite is on sale in the U.K. right now. I'm not too sure how different it would be in taste from regular Marmite, which is after all a yeast spread. I'm speculating it might taste like the slightly beer-y Cenovis. Now how to get my hands on one... (link via Coolest Gadgets and The Guinness Blog - yes, Guinness has a blog. The portal is a bugger...just say you are from England, and old enough.)

Filed under:  ingredients offbeat uk
Keep reading Guinness Marmite! →

Food Destinations is back for round 5! This time it's hosted by Natalia of From Our Kitchen, and the theme is Where Everybody Knows Your Name. <a href="Details are here! The deadline is March 18th.

Filed under:  food destinations food events

Recently I've been getting several P.R. type emails from new sites that feature videos that they think appeal to food lovers. I do take a look at them, and with very few exceptions I must say that most of them are not worth my time.

I think the people who run all-video sites need to really understand two things before anything else. First is the difference between passive video viewing, i.e. on TV the way many of us still watch TV, and voluntary video viewing. Voluntary viewing means stuff that I must make a conscious effort to choose to view. DVDs fall into this category, as does online video. When I go to YouTube for instance, I need to search, click and then wait a bit to download the video. If the video is crap then I will never view it again, and chances are I'll try to avoid anything uploaded by that user if I remember to.

Filed under:  books and media food sites

quinoa_kedgeree1.teaser.jpg

Here's another very easy 'dry' type curry dish that's a favorite in our house, though it's not Japanese. Kedgeree is a very British dish, that doesn't seem to be well known outside of the U.K. It was originally created by the British colonists in India, who took the spices and grain of the land they were in with the smoked haddock from their homeland. It used to be served for breakfast, but nowadays it's a supper dish.

This version of kedgeree uses quinoa as the grain (technically it's a seed but it's used as a grain in cooking, so that's what I'll call it). Quinoa has a unique bubbly texture and a neutral flavor that takes on any flavors added to it. It's also very filling, which makes it rather ideal when you're trying to watch the intake. It's very easy to cook, and never seems to go too watery and so on. I'm just a recent convert to quinoa, but I love it already and have it at least a couple of times a month.

I've used cod as the fish here but you can use any fish you like, even canned tuna or salmon. It doesn't taste 'fishy' in any way - the lemon and the curry take care of that. The key to making this kedgeree taste fresh and bright is to add tons of parsley (instead of the traditional coriander) and lemon juice. It turns into something that's like a warm, spicy dinner salad. To keep the whole healthy thing going I've used olive oil instead of butter.

Any leftovers store nicely in the fridge, and like the previous dry curry makes a great obento lunch too. It tastes fine cooled or at room temperature.

Filed under:  lighter curry quinoa grains
Keep reading Quinoa kedgeree →

Happy Valentine's Day! February the 14th may mean flowers, a romantic dinner, or promises you don't intend to keep for other people, but to me it will always the Day Of Chocolate.

Valentine's Day is a very odd and overly commercialized day in Japan, where the giving and receiving of chocolate doesn't have that much to do with romance. Females are made to feel obligated to hand out chocolates to people they don't care about, such as teachers and bosses, while males anxiously wait to see if they get 'enough' chocolates to satisfy their egos. There are whole lines of inexpensive chocolate products suitable for giving, called giri choco (obligation chocolate). Unlike in the Western world, it's not a day for men to give something to their female love interests. (March 14th, called "White Day", has been sort of artificially designated as the males-give-back-to-females day.)

Filed under:  chocolate japanese memories valentine

According to a recently published study by ACNielsen called What’s Hot Around the World – Insights on Growth in Food & Beverage Products, yogurt (or yoghurt if you're the Queen of England), especially the drinkable kind, was the fastest growing food product worldwide in 2006. "Spoonable" or regular yogurt didn't do too bad either. (Coincidentally, we just bought a very cute R2-D2 shaped yogurt maker. I plan to make yogurt in it of course, but I did buy it for another reason...which shall be revealed later. (Hint: it's very sticky.))

Other findings in the report include: in Europe people wanted more "cooking basics" like oils; North Americans wanted more fresh and/or 'healthy' products like pre-prepared salads (I guess at least before the spinach scare); the best selling alcoholic beverage is beer; and in China and some other countries in Asia, baby formula sales increased dramatically. Link to report (PDF).

Filed under:  trends

flying_toasters.jpg

Not quite food related, but, uhm, it's about toasters. And toast. This has been around for a few months but what the heck, I just found it today. Retro Toast is a free (Creative Commons) version of the classic early '90s screensaver, Flying Toasters! Flying toasters, and other After Dark products like their awesome Star Trek themed desktops, were what converted young bratty "but everyone uses Peecees" spouting self permanently to the light (the world of Macs) forever. That was....7 Macs ago. I feel old now. Retro Toast is available for the dark..I mean, Windows, as well as OS X.

Filed under:  geekery offbeat
Keep reading Flying toasters! →

Pages