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.