Real Sake Cake Cheese

I like to visit sake breweries（酒蔵）, though I can consume little alchoholic drinks.
My purpose of visiting there is actually not for going to see sake fermentation processes, but to buy a local sake and sake cake sold in shops adjoining the breweries.
Not to mention that these local sake's taste is terrific, but also it is very attractive that we can find many bottles of unfamilier sakes that are not sold in a nearby super market.

This time I went to one sake brewery to send a few bottoles of sake for my husband's parents who alwasy send us vegetables.
Local sake sold in the sake brewery should be a good gift to those people who likes sake.
Since my hubband's parents make a habit of having a drink at dinner, sake gift is always welcomed by them.

When browsing in the brewery, I was amazed to come across a sake cheese cake cheese.
The below slim stick is the cheese that I found.

This is what I wanted to cook by myself the other day.
As soon as I found it, I bought it to taste later at home.

During dinner time, I enjoyed this cheese, analysing how this cheese was made of.
In my guess, cream cheese apparently was mixed with some amount of sake cake by adding a diced hard type of cheese, cheddar cheese or something.

Anyway, the taste was quite satisfying!

Cheese and sake cake were amazingly well-balanced.
Though both cheese and sake cake should have unique aroma,  their flavour of this cheese complement each other.

I really like it.

As I feel this costs a little bit (490 yen), though high quality cheese might be used, I am thinking of creating sake cake cheese again by combing cream cheese, hard type cheese, and sake cake next time.

This cheese went very well with the sake I bought.

Dress okuras with mayonnaise

Okura... as posted last time I had felt at loss how to cook this summer vegetable even though I had lots of chances to get it.

One of the chances was when my husband parents' sent to us.

Look at this!

The size was totally different with the okuras I bought in a super market last time.

I cooked this big okura with chicken breast meat and dressed it with mayonnaise plus other seasonings.

This recipe was obtained from a local restaurant and easy to follow.
Very suitable for such a lazy cook like me.

<Ingredients>

• 1 pc of chicken breast (In my case, low fat sasami(white chicken meat) was used in consideration of my husband's health)
• About 15pcs of okuras

Mayonnaise sauce

• 150-200 g mayonnaise
• 40cc mirin
• 20cc sake
• 60g white miso
• A proper amount of lemon juice
• Some salt to remove prickles of the okura

<How to >

1. Prepare for the mayonnaise sauce. Mix all ingredients for the sauce. Note that mirin and sake have to be heated for seconds in order to burn off alcohol in their contents, otherwise their unique flavour will remain when you taste this dish.
2. Spread the salt over the chopping board and place the okura there to roll over. (The home-made okura has larger prickles, which needs to be removed to eahance their texture)
3. Put the okura into the pod to boil it.  After that, roughly cut it into three or four pieces.
4. Boil the chicken breast and cut it into bite-sized pieces.
5. Dress the boiled chicken pieces and the okura pieces with the mayonnaise sauce.

This was delicious!

Tell the truth, as I had been lazy, I had skipped the process of burning off the alcohol contained in mirin and sake when cooking last time.. the result was terrible...the taste was not better than this time.

I learned how important it is to follow the recipe according to the process provided from the restaurant without skipping it.

My first unadon（鰻丼） in this summer

Do you know how expensive Unadon(鰻丼） is this summer?
Due to shortage of fry of eels, prices of dishes used with eels skyrocketed.
Last month I came across an unbelievably expensive Unadon in a convenience store in my neighborhood.

You know what!
It was 1, 900 yen for one box of the unadon.
It shouldn't be a lunch box's price.

Unadon is one of typical eel dishes;  Soy sauce based sweet sauce is poured over a cooked eel on rice.
This dish is often adored by Japanese during summer because we believe we can gain energy to survive muggy Japanese summer by eating an eel containing high nutrition.

When I lived with my parents, my parents went to eat Unadon in a restaurant. This was a kind of our family's custom during summer.

The other day when I visited my parents' house, my father brought me to eat Unadon.
He knew that  this made me happy because I couldn't afford eating Unadon by myself, especially this summer due to crazy price of an eel even sold in a super market.
Definitely his guess was right and I really happy going there.

It was yummy as always!
The price rose up to 2,000 yen, increased by 500 yen.
In my opinion, only 500 yen's rise up from last year's price was comparatively gently-priced.

Anyway, I felt like gaining energy again by enjoying my first Unadon this summer.


 

Yuzu pepper flavoured okuras

Okura, this summer vegetable is tasty and healthy, so I like them.

However, there is a problem ... I don't know more than one recipe of eating them.
Every time I got them I sliced and ate with natto(納豆).
This made me gradually sick

So, I checked other recipes of using okuras that gives an idea that okura can provide further possibility to taste better. One of recipes attracting me is using yuzu pepper to add flavour to them.

This is also very easy as long as you can get yuzu pepper tube

[Ingredients]
・2 packs of okuras
・Small amounts of yuzu pepper
・300ml white dashi soup(白だし)
・Some salts (to remove akras' prickles)

* You can use your own dashi soup, but I used very useful shiro dashi because I was lazy.
Colour of shiro dashi is weak, which made colour of okuras bright.

[How to]
1) Spread salt over the chopping board and place okras there to roll over.

2) Boil the okuras in hot boiled water for a few minutes and cool them in iced water.
(This makes colour of the okuras bright)

3) Mix the dashi with the yuzu pepper to adjust the taste.

4) Soak the okuras in the dashi overnight.

Next day will be the good timing to eat them.
The taste was a little bit spicy, but I could eat all portions of the okuras including their calyxes.

Make home-made ice cream with my nephew

Finally, my summer vacation I longed for had come, though it was only one week.

At the same time, happier thing was that my nephew visited me to stay some nights in my house, which made my vacation more enjoyable.

We had fun together... going to a local aquarium, having a swim in a pool, playing 将棋(shogi) and so on.

One of them he enjoyed was cooking.

We cooked home-made ice cream in a very easy but slow way.
This process needs patience, however, it was good for him to have something looking forward during intervals between doing summer vacation's home works.
(Japanese elementary school students have lots of home works during their summer vacation)

[Time consumed]
・About 2 hours

[Ingredients]
・2 yolks
・60g sugar
・200ml fresh cream*
・Chosolate cookies (if you like)

*It would be better to use animal type fresh cream containing high fats.
Last time when I used less fat fresh cream which I usually opted for, the ice cream was not frozen well.

[How to]
 1) Prepare the ingredients and measure them.
(For my little nephew, it was not easy to get a yolk from an egg but he did quite well.)

2) Mix all of the ingredients.

3) Add chocolate cookies if you like cookies and cream ice cream.
(Though there was no plan to add chocolate cookies into the ingredients,  I suddenly remembered there were chocolate cookies left over in my fridge.)

This chocolate cookies contained big portions of chocolates. Luckily suitable for ice creams.

4) Pour them into a tray.

5) Put the tray into the freezer and wait for 45 minutes.

6) 45 minutes later, take the tray out of the freezer to stir.

7) Put it in the freezer again and wait for another 30 minutes.

8) Do the same thing again (Put it in the freezer again and wait for another 30 minutes).

The below photo was how the ice cream turned to after 1 hour and 45 minutes later.

The taste was very yummy.
My nephew commented "This is cookies and cream that is my favourite!" and seemed to satisfy the taste.

But there was one point that I would like to pay attention to next time I cook.
This ice cream was easy to be melt in this hot summer.... so it was soon melted down.

I will definitely put ice cream glasses into the fridge before eating not to let ice cream easily melt like this time.

Fresh spring roll with the use of bean sprouts

もやし(bean sprouts) are stably cheap vegetables in Japan.
This useful vegitable is not influenced by Japanse economic downturn, so I often use them on a daily basis.

This time I cooked fresh spring rolls with the use of bean sprouts.

The point  this time is its sauce.

I used honey and lemon this time though basically I eat fresh spring rolls with a sweet sesame sauce.
This challenge made me feel something different with usual time.

[Ingredients of sauce]
・Honey
・Lemon
・Nan Pla(Thai fish sauce)
・Chinese Chili Bean Sauce

Ise Lobstar

After storing precooked vegetables in the fridge and packing necessities in my travel bag, my husband and I left for staying overnight with my husband families in Mie.
This time we went to Toba city, one of sea side towns in Mie prefecture.

I like is Mie, because we can have beautiful and fresh sea foods there.
In the hotel, we enjoyed having raw Ise Lobster.

Though Ise Lobster is not familiar seafood in places where I was born and I live now, there are many hotels and inns which can serve Ise Lobsters in Toba.

Since I had never tasted this precious Lobster until this time, I wanted to describe here what a taste it was like, but to be honest the amount of sliced pieces of raw Ise Lobstar was so small that I couldn't retain the memory of the taste in my brain...I think the taste was a little bit flat.

Besides Ise Lobsters, other seafood was also wonderful.
I was happy to enjoy nice supper with my family.

Diced eggplants and cucumbers soaked in mentsuyu

Lots of vegetables arrived at home, but I had to leave for travelling with my family.

This was not good timing to receive vegetables because those vegitables go bad easily under severe humid and hot Japanese summer without processing them such as heating or makiing them frozen .

I soaked some of vegitables in dashi or salted rice malt, or chopping/cutting others and stored them into the fridge at the morning just before I left for travelling.

One of them are egg plants and cucumbers.

This is very easy.


<Ingredients>
・Eggplant
・Cucumber
・Mentsuyu

<How to>
1) Chop these vegetables into small pieces.
2) Put them in mentsuyu.

Since actually I could not find mentsuyu in my fridge, I made menstuyu with the use of soy sauce, dashi, sugar, and mirin.

Today I poured them over 素麺(so-men) noodles.
It turned to be a quick lunch for a lazy housewife.

Vegitables from my family

My husband's parents like to grow vegetables.
They often send vegetables they harvested well.

I really appreciate their vegetables because nowadays vegetables are not so inexpensive in Japan, beside their vegetable taste much better due to no use of chemical fertilizer.

These are vegetables they sent Friday.
You can find typical summer vegetables grown in Japanese summer.

Tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, and オクラ(okras).

Cucumbers and ゴーヤ(goyas).

ししとう(Shishito peppers) and インゲン豆（green beans).

Yogurt with tomato and avocado

These days I am addicted to yogurt.  I consumed it several times in one day, not only in the morning but also before/after tea.

My sudden yogurt addiction started a few weeks ago and triggered by one Japanese TV show, called "ホンマでっか！？TV ".

This TV provides audiences with useful information in some fields such as health and human relationships. The interesting thing is real scientists and doctors take part in the show and presented their theories. Sometime their theories sound reliable and assuring, while other time they are just like plausible and fishy stories.

The other day one of presenters insisted "If you want to sleep well, eat yogurt." According to him, it seemed that our bowels are sensitive equivalent level to our brains. And he added, "There should be the best yogurt that is perfectly suitable to your body." This statement interested me.

The best yogurt...

I had never thought that there may be a perfect yogurt for my body.

Since then, every time I found yogurt, I tried to buy different one with last time I bought.
Though there are not so many yogurts in a supermarket near my house, I tried nearly 10 types of yogurts.

To be honest, I still cannot get the best yogurt for my body...
Or  I can say I still cannot understand how my body reacts if I encounter the best yogurt.

Anyway, every time I bought yogurt I ate them in different ways.
With  jams like strawberry and blueberry, syrups like honey and brown sugar syrup.

But gradually I felt sick of having similar sweet tastes.

So, this time I pour tomatoes and avocados over the yogurt.
The tomato and avocado were leftover when I made salad.
I roughly chopped tomatoes and avocados into several pieces, added sugar into them and kept them overnight in the fridge.

This morning I ate this yogurt... Yummy!!!
At least much better than I had expected.

I feel some hesitation to add sugar to tomatoes because I believe Japanese people do not eat tomato added with sugar normally.

But actually sugared tomatoes taste good.

Until I get sick with this sweet vegetables, this would be my new favourite in my yogurt life.

Plum syrup juice instead of red shiso juice

I have a little lovable nephew, 7 year-old,  who likes my mother's home made red shiso juice.

Here is one episode.

When he visited my house to stay over some nights last year, I welcomed him with my home made ume juice. At that time words popped out of his mouth was unforgettable.
He said "This is not tasty, don't you have red shiso juice in your house?"

But I had never made red shiso juice and so of course I had no red shiso juice in my house.
I said "Sorry not in my house". Listening to my word, he was so disappointed.

I felt regretful that I could not make him happy because of no red shiso juice in my house.
This is why this year I've started to make red shiso juice.
I asked my friend who loved to cook. She introduced me one recipe, saying "This recipe is the best".

The website she recommended is ちいママさんちのしそジュースシロップ .

In fact her word didn't betray my expectation. This recipe is easy-to-follow, besides tasty.
If you understand the instruction that the cook said on this website, you cannot help smiling.
The Japanese itself is cute, especially I like her child's comments.

Anyway I successfully made my first red shiso juice thanks to this wonderful recipe and enjoyed tasting every day every night... then it had gone easily.

Since I felt confident I could make red shiso juice any time, all I have to do was expecting my nephew's visit.

A few days ago, my nephew rang me "I would like to visit your house when my summer vacation starts." He said he planed to come here next week.
So, I went to a supermarket in high glee last Friday to buy red shiso, but.... to my surprise red shiso was sold nowhere.

No, no, no!

It seemed that the best season of red shiso was over. I didn't know that.

What should I do to satisfy him?

Suddenly I hit upon making plum juice, though I had never tried.

1) Because I found many plums in the super market
2) Plus I remembered one recipe which I had came across on a magazine the other day

Since I didn't remember the recipe in detail, today I went to a book shop to browse.

Here is the recipe (though I changed some parts because of some reasons)

<Ingredients>
Approx 500g plum(大石早生）
130g white sugar

 <How to cook>
1. Cut cleanly washed plums in halves, put them into a pod, and add over the plums.

2. Mix them with a hand.

3. Simmer over low heat  (I don't remember what time it took but waited until colour of the plums turned to be like below.)

The taste was just like sour peach juice. 

A little bit sour than I had imagined before cooking, this may be because I didn't use fully riped plums that was recommended on the magazine. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find riped plums at the super market.)

I have totally no idea this can be my nephew's taste, but I am looking forward to welcoming him next week with this juice.

Sake Cake Cheese with Tomato and Avocado

Last Sunday, I cooked Sake Cake Cheese. As I posted at that time, the taste didn't meet my expectation, but the day after that I tried to taste again. Since I couldn't eat all so many portions of the cheese only for one day, there was many leftover.

I tasted and found...something seemed to happen!

The taste was much milder, not sour at all.

So, I cooked the below salad with the use of this cheese.

Do you think it looked like a mozzarella cheese with tomato and avocado?

My husband thought that. He didn't know I used Sake Cake instead of a mozzarella cheese, he thought this was a mozzarella cheese judging from its appearance. But after having tasted it, he commented "Ummm.... this cheese tasted something unusual."

Agar was used to solidify Sake Cake juice, so its texture still could tell it was different with normal cheese.

Also, flavor and aroma of Sake Cake didn't vanish. If you don't like its flavor and aroma, this cheese might not be your taste, because Sake Cake is acquired taste. (In my case, I didn't like Sake Cake in my childhood, which my father enjoyed it during winter time)

For me, this is an interesting challenge, but next time I would like to add real cheese such as cream cheese to make the taste better. I believe Sake Cake and Cheese go well in one dish because both are fermented foods.

Cheese from Sake Cake

One of the foods I love is Sake Cake.

Do you know Sake Cake?

It's called "Sake Kasu" in Japanese.

If you know the word "Kasu"in Japanese, you might feel wired, because Kasu means lees or dregs, which should not be an appropriate ingredient for eating.

As the original meaning indicates, Sake Cake is just lees left over after producing Sake. It contains no alcohol. That's why it might be useless for people who like to drink, however it's good to be used for cooking sweet non-alcohol drink called "Amazake" or miso soup to taste better.

Since this is a fermented food which becomes popular for Japanese once it was reported that fermented food could prevent diseases , Sake Cake gained its popularity.

During winter time, I cooked Amazake and had it every day to warm my body, but now is summer... so what should I cook by using Sake Cake?

This time I challenged to cook cheese from Sake Cake.
I found the recipe on the web; cook cheese from Sake Cake.

The idea sounds very exciting!

The recipe looks very easy!

So, tonight I cooked it.

All ingredients I used and how I cooked were as follows:

<Ingredients>

1) Sake Cake (200g)

2) Water (800cc)

3) Olive Oil (Some)

4) Salt (1 pinch)

5) Lemon juice (100 cc)

6) Powdered agar (5 tbsp)

<How to cook>

1) Boil the water in a pot and put the agar and the Sake Cake.

2) Pour the oil and the lemon juice into the heated pot. Add the salt.

3) Wait until heat of the pot is cooled.

This cooking was very easy, and it was successfully completed, but unfortunately it didn't work as I had imagine...the taste was far from I had imagined.

Too sour!

I should have reduced the amount of lemon juice.

Too thin taste!

I should have added more salts.

Beside, I cooked too much more cheese than I needed.

Maybe one-quarter would be enough...

Now I am puzzled how I can consume such a huge amount of the sour and thin tasted cheese....

Introduction

Hello, I'm Peco.

I love to read manga.  I've read them in Japanese since childhood until recently, but these days start to read them in English to improve my English.
It is interesting to know differences between Japanese original meaning and English translated meaning... sometimes feel how great a translator's skill was and other time feel translated English could not express what an original manga really wants to indicate because of cultural differences.

Also, cooking is one of the things I love to challenge, though my cooking skill could be better and variation should be more. To learn and improve my cooking, I try recipes I never tried.
Every time I try some new recipes, I am going to post them on this blog for my record.