produce

About Japanese ingredients and substitutions

maki — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:28:08 +0200

[Updated to add Substitution section.]

I haven’t exactly counted it up, but of the thousands of comments left on Just Hungry, not to mention Just Bento, probably at least a quarter are questions about ingredients or ingredient substitutions. So I thought I might put down what my criteria are for what kind of ingredients I choose to feature in the recipes on either site, especially when it comes to Japanese recipes. [Update added on August 15th, 2008]: I’ve also added some suggested, and acceptable, substitutions.

Can I get a hold of it?

In case you didn’t know, at the moment I live in a country with a fairly miniscule Japanese expat or immigrant population (the last I heard there were less than 2000 Japanese people living in the Zürich area). There is only one real Japanese grocery store near me, and it is quite small with a limited selection of products. There’s also an equally small (though slightly better stocked) Korean grocery store, and a couple of Chinese grocery stores. (See Where I shope for Japanese/Asian ingredients in Zürich.) I supplement what I can get locally by placing an order with Japan Centre a few times a year.

My point is, that what I can get is fairly limited compared to many people, though more generous than others. So by sticking to what I can get here, I think that I’m in a good middle ground for people trying to cook anything Japanese. If you live in a region (e.g. most of California, New York City, or Hawaii) with big Japanese expat/immigrant populations, you have a much bigger selection available to you than I do!

(My mom also sends me things from Japan periodically, but I do not include the more exotic things in the recipes here, though I might mention then in passing.)

Is it available by mailorder?

I also periodically check to see if certain ingredients are available online. Some online merchants don’t have very comprehensive listings on their web sites, but by emailing them they can tell you if they have something in stock.

Where to look for Japanese ingredients

In order of the likelihood of finding Japanese ingredients:

Japanese grocery stores, including online stores. This is obvious. Please consult the Worldwide Japanese grocery store list for your area, and go to your nearest store to see what they have! That’s the best way to get acquainted with unfamiliar ingredients.
Korean grocery stores. A lot of Japanese ingredients are used in Korean cooking.
Chinese grocery stores and general Asian grocery stores. Chinese grocery stores tend to stock less Japanese ingredients than Korean grocery stores, but you can still find a lot of things.
Health food stores, including online stores. Many dry and/or vegan ingredients, such as rice flour, kuzu powder, agar-agar, miso and so on can be found at health food stores.
South East Asian grocery stores (Thai, etc.) These stores don’t stock Japanese ingredients per se, but some of the fresh product and things can be used.
South Asian grocery stores (Indian, Sri Lankan, etc.) These can be a surprisingly good source for ‘exotic’ vegetables and such that are used in Japanese cooking.

Is it a widely used ingredient in Japanese cooking?

In general, I try to stay away from any ingredient that might be considered to be too regional or esoteric in Japan, and stick to ingredients that are likely to be in any Japanese kitchen.

Is the recipe something that is normally made in Japan?

When I do traditional Japanese recipes here, I try to stick to ones that are commonly made in Japanese homes (vs. something exotic, regional or so complicated it’s only available in restaurants).

The exception to this rule is when I try to make something that is readily available in Japan, but not necessarily elsewhere. An example of this is really fresh tofu. The hard work required is worth it for the results.

Ingredient substitutions

In certain cases, you can make substitutions without a problem. I try to include substitution recommendations whenever possible, or when I am fairly sure it would work. For instance, many Japanese recipes call for katokuriko （片栗粉）which is a flour made from potato starch, but this is hard to get outside of Japan in most places. Cornstarch (or cornflour) has a very similar texture and performs the same function, so that is an easy substitute. Using honey or syrup instead of maple syrup will change the flavor a bit but also works.

In some cases though there is no substitution. If you are making kuzumochi, you really can’t use anything other than kuzu powder if you want the same texture.

Sometimes you just need to try out a substitution to see if it works. For instance, when I call for a specific rice flour like shiratama-ko or joushinko, but you can’t get it, try substituting a rice flour you can get and see how it goes. (I ‘ve made rice dumplings with red rice flour from Sri Lanka, and it turned out fairly well.) The worst that can happen is that you end up with an inedible dish that you have to throw away, but that’s not the end of the world. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes!

Some acceptable substitutions

[This section added on August 15, 2008]

Mirin and sake. I think more people ask about substitutes for these two ingredients than anything else put together. Both are alcoholic beverages (though mirin is never drunk and is only used in cooking). Mirin is stronger and sweeter than sake. Sake can be used as a substitute for mirin (with an added pinch of sugar), and vice versa. If you cannot get a hold of either, you can use sweet sherry or Chinese shiaoxing wine. If you cannot use alcohol for religious or other reasons, even though most of the alcohol will evaporate after cooking, just leave it out - it will affec the flavor but there’s no reasonable non-alcoholic substitute that I can think of.
Japanese-style or sushi rice. Keep in mind that ‘sushi rice’ is a name given by non-Japanese sellers to Japanese style or japonica medium grain rice. Medium-grain Italian rices that are used for risotto, such as vialone and arborio, are acceptable substitutes for Japanese rice; long grain rices including basmati and jasmine rice are not.
Dashi stock. Japanese stock is usually made from kombu seaweed, dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi), dried fish called niboshi, or a combination of all or two of these. (See basic dashi recipe.) You may find it difficult to find these ingredients, or they may be too expensive. Powdered or granular dashi stock is similar to stock cubes, and can be used instead of made-from-scratch dashi; keep in mind that dashi granules are saltier and often contain MSG. See also vegan dashi stock made with dried shiitake mushrooms and kombu seaweed. If you can’t get a hold of any of these, you can use a basic vegetable stock instead - it won’t taste that Japanese but it’s better than plain water at least!
Miso and soy sauce. There are no substitutes for these. As to whether you should stick to Japanese soy sauce or use other kinds - I do believe that Japanese soy sauce tastes quite different from, say, Chinese soy sauce, but your palate may not be able to detect a big difference. Kikkoman is the most famous Japanese brand, and is available worldwide.
Japanese tonkatsu sauce or okonomiyaki sauce, or “bulldog” sauce. Bulldog is the brand name of a popular line of barbeque-type sauces that are used in a lot of dishes, from panfried noodles (yakisoba) to deep fried pork cutlets (tonkatsu) , okonomiyaki, takoyaki and more. If you’re in the U.S., you can use A-1 Steak Sauce, maybe tempered with a little added sugar and/or ketchup. Elsewhere, you can use Worcestershire sauce for the flavor if not the texture.
Rice vinegar. White balsamic vinegar is the best substitute, but that’s rather more exotic I think than rice vinegar! You can use also use a mild white wine vinegar instead, with a pinch of sugar to mellow it out.

In the vast majority of recipes here on Just Hungry as well as on Just Bento, I try to stick to these flavoring ingredients, plus universal ones like salt, pepper and sugar, so hopefully you won’t run into too many problems around here at least.

Are there any other ingredients you’d like to know possible substitions for? Let me know in the comments.

What instead of the tomato?

maki — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:15:23 +0200

If there is one produce item that says summer more than any other, I think it’s the tomato. Every year I look forward to the arrival of big, juicy tomatoes that have been ripened on the vine outdoors. Once they come to market, I indulge in them any way I can. This year is no different.

But in the U.S. people are being warned off of certain tomatoes (plum and Roma) from certain regions, as well as some types of peppers and cilantro, because of a salmonella scare. While the Food and Drug Administration is saying that tomatoes from other regions are safe, I think it is human nature to be wary of tomatoes in general - just like the spinach contamination scare of last year.

While it’s not much of a stretch to think of alternative greens to spinach, it’s hard to think of alternatives to tomatoes. What else matches that tart-sweet juiciness?

Are you avoiding tomatoes this summer? What are you using instead of them if so? What other produce says “summer” to you? Any suggestions for tomato-less summer salad?

New potatoes with butter and soy sauce (Shinjaga shouyu bataa)

maki — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:34:37 +0200

We live in a semi-rural area (well, most areas outside of the cities are semi-rural in Switzerland) and one of the things grown here locally are potatoes. While most farmers like to grow those potatoes until they are quite huge, around this time we can get tiny new potatoes. I love new potatoes - they have a fresh, very slightly mineral-y flavor to them which is quite different from mature potatoes.

If you’re not familiar with new potatoes, try to get organically grown ones. This way you can eat them skin and all - peeling those really tiny potatoes can be a bit of a pain. The skins of fresh new potatoes should pale and very thin.

The easiest thing to do to new potatoes is to simply boil them and eat them with salt, pepper and a little butter or crème fraîche. This Japanese-flavor recipe is almost as easy though. Soy sauce and butter go marvelously well together, and enhance the new potatoes in a very satisfying way. In Japan the new potatoes would be deep-fried to get them crispy, but I’ve oven-baked them instead to cut down somewhat on the fat. (New potatoes in Japanese are called shinjaga （新じゃが）).

Recipe: New potatoes with butter and soy sauce (Shinjaga shouyu bataa)

About 500g / 1 lb tiny organic new potatoes, washed and unpeeled
Salt
2 Tbs. butter (You can use olive oil instead. But, you know, sometimes it just has to be butter.)
1 Tbs. soy sauce
Sansho （山椒）or black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Put the potatoes in a pan with water to cover; add salt (the water should taste almost as salty as sea water). Bring to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes. (Do this while the oven is heating up.)

Drain the potatoes. Melt the butter in the same pan and add the soy sauce. Mix the potatoes and butter-soy sauce well, and put onto a baking sheet.

Roast for 25 to 30 minutes unti the potatoes are browned and cooked through. Serve warm or at room temperature sprinkled with a little sansho/sanshou pepper (available at Japanese grocery stores) or black pepper.

Want more butter + soy sauce?

Try corn on the cob with butter and soy sauce…delicious!

How to cook bamboo shoots (takenoko)

maki — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:22:40 +0200

There are two Japanese vegetables that I can’t get fresh here that I miss very much. One is burdock root or gobo; the other is bamboo shoot or takenoko (竹の子 or 筍）. Bamboo shoots are very much a spring-only vegetable, much like asparagus, so around this time of year I always get a craving for the crunch and subtle flavor.

While fresh bamboo shoots haven’t made their appearance at markets and stores in Zürich, it is possible to buy precooked bamboo shoots. (And the truth is, most Japanese people nowadays use convenient precooked bamboo shoots anyway. Fresh bamboo shoots start to go hard and somewhat bitter as soon as they are dug up.)

An added bonus: boiled bamboo shoots are so low in calories that you can put them on your ‘eat as much as I want’ list. 100 grams has about 12 calories and 1 gram of fiber.

Cooking fresh bamboo shoots

If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where you can get fresh bamboo shoots, here’s how to cook them.

Select bamboo shoots that are heavy and firm, with a lively looking outer skin. (Only about 2 or 3 kinds of bamboo varieties produce edible shoots, and they are all quite large and come from fairly old bamboos. You could experiment with bamboo shoots from your garden, but you do so at your own risk.)
Cut off the pointy end and the root end.
Put in a pot with enough white rinsing water when you wash rice to cover. (Alternatively you can put in some rice bran, wrapped in a cheesecloth.) Bring to a boil, and simmer for about an hour or more, until it is tender enough to poke a skewer through. (Some suggest putting a couple of chili peppers in the simmering water.)
Let cool in the water; if you try to peel it while it’s still hot, the shoot may split.
The outer skin will peel off easily. You can then proceed and use the bamboo shoot in various dishes.

Using pre-cooked vacuum packed bamboo shoots

You can get canned bamboo shoots, but I much prefer the vacuum packed kind. They are a pale shadow of freshly cooked bamboo shoots, but they haave to do. They come packed in a little water.

Essentially they have been cooked in the manner described above, and are ready to use. You may see some white gritty stuff in the inner folds - that’s just rice residue. Rinse it out in water.

Once you’ve opened a vacuum packed bamboo shoot, try to use it up right away.

Recipe: Takenoko Gohan (Bamboo shoot rice)

Takenoko gohan is a quintessential spring dish. The rice is subtly perfumed by the bamboo shoot, which retains its crunchy texture. This can really make me homesick for Japan.

This is a method to cook it in a rice cooker. This is a vegan dish.

3 rice cooker cups (1 cup = 180ml) rice (white rice is traditional, but you could use sprouted brown rice. If using regular brown rice, soak it overnight.)
3 dried shiitake mushrooms, pre-soaked until soft
1/2 small to medium cooked bamboo shoot (about 4 oz / 120g)
1 Tbs. sake
1 Tbs. mirin
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1/2 to 1 tsp. salt (less salt if you intend to eat this as part of a Japanese meal with other salty things; more if this is served as a side-dish Western style)
The soaking liquid from the shiitake, plus added water if needed

Wash the rice and drain in a sieve.

Drain off the dried shiitake, reserving the soaking liquid. Add to the rice in the rice cooker, and top up with water if needed to bring it up to the 3-cup level mark. Add the sake, mirin, soy sauce and salt. Let the rice soak for at least 30 minutes. (Overnight if you’re using regular brown rice.)

In the meantime, chop up the shiitake and cut the bamboo shoot half into bitesize pieces. Add to the rice, and cook using regular cooking settings.

Let rest for at least 10 minutes after cooking, and them fluff up to mix.

Recipe: Bamboo shoot and snap pea stir fry with bacon

The other half of the bamboo shoot can be used in a stir-fry or a miso soup. Here’s a simple stir fry that uses another spring vegetable, snap peas. The bacon makes it not very vegetarian. You can leave it out for a vegan version.

1/2 small to medium cooked bamboo shoot (about 4 oz / 120g), sliced
2 cups snap peas, de-veined if needed and trimmed
2 slices bacon, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup white parts of spring or green onions sliced
1 Tbs. oil
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
pepper
a few drops of chili oil Head up the oil in a wok. Add the bacon and cook until just about crisp. Add the onion, stir fry a couple of minutes. Add snap peas and stir fry until bright green and crisp-tender. Add bamboo shoots, soy sauce and salt and pepper, and the chili oil, and take off the heat.

Hundreds of squash and pumpkins: A great seed source in Switzerland

maki — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:32:02 +0100

It always makes me happy when I find a small company, especially one that’s (fairly) local, doing one thing in a big way. KCB Samen in Basel is such a place - they specialize in squash and pumpkin seeds, and they have literally hundreds of them! Just browsing through their site (which is available in German, French and English) is so much fun. I’ve been seing more and more squash and pumpkins at our local markets, but the variety on the site is something else. Who knew there were so many different shapes and colors of the humble curcubit? Besides hundreds of pumpkins and squash, they have 64 kinds of zucchini or courgettes, ornamental gourds, and other things too.

They list pricing in CHF and Euro, so I’m assuming they do ship in Europe. Even if you can’t order from them the site is a great place to look up various squash and pumpkin types. I am a tomato-fiend, but growing tomatoes outside without any protection is a struggle in our microclimate, that seems to get more discouraging every year - especially like this year when the summer was cold and wet. Maybe I’ll switch to squash and pumpkin love…I can’t wait for spring to come already!

Link: KCB Samen

Nature has the best recipe

maki — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:08:57 +0200

At the moment, cherries are everywhere here in Switzerland. Roadside signs proclaim “Kirschen” or “Chriesli” (the Swiss-German dialect for cherries), luring you to farms and fruit groves and farm stores. They’re on sale at the Migros supermarket too, for the busy person to pick up in a hurry.

When I get started on cherries, I can’t seem to stop until I’ve had my fill, and I do mean fill, of that sweet, dark juice with a hint of sourness. Fresh cherries are so good that I just can’t bring myself to do anything more than pop them in my mouth one after another, methodically spitting out the pits. I know there are numerous cherry recipes out there, but as delicious as things like cherry pie and cherry clafouti are, there’s really nothing to beat the naked, unadorned cherry.

The same goes for strawberries. I do like to treat them lightly with balsamic vinegar, or eat them the way kids do in Japan as ichigo miruku (strawberries and milk). But when you’re lucky enough to get top quality strawberries in their real season, juicy and sweet to the core, doing anything more than flicking off any dirt specks from the surface and eating them as is, leaving only the hulls, seems to be a crime.

I could go on and on. Ripe, soft apricots, fragrant peaches and nectarines, juicy plums, tender raspberries, really-ripe tomatoes…as the summer progresses, we can indulge in wave upon wave of fresh, sweet fruit and vegetables, ending in the fall with a crescendo of color and flavor (grapes, late plums, pears, apples) before things go quiet and grey again - cabbage and broccoli and other pedestrian vegetables, enlivened with flashes of imported citrus fruits and canned or frozen things from the warm months. Until the cycle starts all over again in early spring with rhubarb, asparagus, bitter spring greens, tiny new potatoes.

In past years, I’ve had a tendency to go a bit crazy sometimes in my zeal to keep and preserve some of the goodness of summer. This year, I’ve made a new batch of apricot preserves and frozen a bunch of strawberries. But really, is there anything better than a pure, unadorned, peach that is so ripe that the sweet juices run down your chin? Is there a need to scramble for yet another recipe, to fiddle around with perfection?

Strange words perhaps from a food blogging person. Food bloggers as a whole seem to be always looking for recipes, recipes, and more recipes. But food is not really about recipes. Food is about taste, enjoyment, pleasure.

We’re very lucky to be living in a time when really fresh and ripe, in-season produce is making a big comeback. We don’t have to just stand for fruit that are so hard you could hammer a nail with them. The producers are listening and responding to our demands for ripe, flavorful, fresh fruits and vegetables.

The older I get (and I’m not that old yet), the more I crave simpler, purer flavors. So this summer, I’m going to enjoy my ripe, juicy fruit with as little fiddling as possible. The memories will spice my winter meals almost as well as the frozen, pickled or otherwise conserved versions will.

Fresh is really best- a 'doh' moment

maki — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:36:49 +0200

Everyone knows in theory that the fresher the vegetables, the better they are. But I think that many of us fall into the habit of buying a bit too many vegetables, storing them in the fridge, and using them as long as they haven’t rotted away or become science experiments in some form. You know, things like carrots and celery, apples and other rather indestructible produce.

But once you see how produce does deteriorate, you start to wonder. Case in point I had some rhubarb stalks left over, and stored in the fridge for about a week after I bought them. (Normally I cook rhubarb right away, but it was cheap at the market so we’d bought more than we needed.) So, yesterday I took them out - they looked crisp and perfectly fine - and turned them into rhubarb crumble pie.

It was tasteless and terrible! It was like eating a rather stringy, bland mush. I’ve never had such a bad rhubarb, and I love rhubarb. We had a couple of mouthfuls and threw the rest away - it was that bad.

So now I’m looking all all those long-lifers in the fridge with a skeptical eye. Sure, carrots and celery may not change that much in taste…but they are surely leeching away nutrients and flavor day by day. And what about those stored apples that come out in the stores mysteriously in the middle of February? Okay, perhaps this is too obvious to even write about. But that awful, bland rhubarb really was an eyeopener…or is that a tastebud-opener…for me.

I guess that I’ve been judging ‘freshness’ with my eyes primarily. I’ve also gotten into the typical habit of shopping once or twice a week. That’s the American way, after all. But in Japan for instance most people - well, most housewives - shop daily, or at least several times a day, and only buy what they need. Here in Switzerland in particular and Europe in general people used to shop like that but the advent of supermarkets and hypermarkets is changing that pattern.

It’s really hard to shop every day, especially when you have to work. I’m going to at least try to keep the vegetable bins a bit less full and shop in smaller amounts though. No more huge economy-size bags of carrots anyway.

Happy Memorial Day to everyone in the USA, and Happy Whitsun / Pfingsten to many people in Europe!

Counteracting the bitterness in greens

maki — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:25:57 +0100

February is not really a great month for local fresh produce around here, but there is one category of vegetables that is quite abundant around this time - greens. There’s endive, kale, spinach, Swiss chard, chicory, and some less common greens like puntarelle. One problem with many winter or early-spring greens is that they have a bitter flavor.

There are various ways of reducing or counteracting the bitterness; the method you use depends on the kind of greens you are using and how concerned you are about retaining nutrients and such.

Blanching - put the greens in boiling water for a minute then drain and run under cold water. This works well for many greens but you may be concerned about nutrients going down the drain.
Adding sweetness, such as sugar or honey, during cooking. This method is used in American Southern cooking for collard greens, and in Japanese cooking as well for things like warabi (a kind of fern) shoots and fuki no toh (the stems of a plant called fuki). The disadvantage obviously is that you are adding sugar, plus this kind of method usually requires a long cooking time.
Counterbalancing the bitterness with aromatic vegetables like garlic. Sautéing greens in oil with lots of garlic and/or onions works well to counteract the bitterness of mildly bitter greens.
Counterbalancing with acid, salt and strong flavors. A bitter salad green like arugula (rocket, rucola) demands a rather strong tasting dressing.
Long, slow braising. If you braise bitter greens over low heat for a long time (see braised endives) the bitterness mellows.

In any case I hope you don’t reject some greens just because they are bitter. A little bit of bitterness really adds depth to the overall flavor, and define the character of certain vegetables. There’s a trend in the past few decades to hybridize fruits and vegetables to eliminate the more challenging flavors like sourness and bitterness, and that’s really a shame. We don’t really want produce that’s just sweet and bland…do we?

Pre-salted tomatoes?

maki — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:53:18 +0100

I love tomatoes, and I love salt. So this post about growing hydroponic tomatoes with a weak sodium chloride solution on one of my new must-read blogs, News for Curious Cooks authored by Harold McGee, definitely caught my eye.

According to the post,

At the Institute of Vegetable Science in Freising, German scientists grew hydroponic tomatoes in a solution that was 0.1% sodium chloride, about one-thirtieth the salinity of seawater. The plants produced fruits with significantly higher levels of flavorful organic acids and sugars, and as much as a third more vitamin C and beta-carotene (the precursor to vitamin A) and the antioxidant red pigment lycopene.

Although the study apparently doesn't say anything about whether the tomatoes taste salty (with a 0.1% solution, it's unlikely) the latent gardener and geek in me wants to try out this growing method for myself. I've had limited success growing tomatoes in our cool climate, but with this winter being the warmest it's been in some 1,200 years in Switzerland, maybe we'll get a warm enough summer. So now I'm searching around for hydroponic growing methods that can be done at home. So far I think the best and easiest method might be to use Seramis clay chips (which are sold locally at Coop Gartencenters), which are a bit pricey...but for a great tasting home grown tomato, I'm willing to do just about anything!

Related: On Food and Cooking, the indispensable kitchen and culinary reference by Harold McGee.