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This is another baking project by my wife. This recipe is from the "Beard on bread" cookbook. "Beard on bread" sounds funny. I imagined a beard growing from the surface of the bread but of course "Beard" is the name of the late, famous "cook, cookbook author and TV personality" James Beard. The annual  James Beard Foundation Award is considered the "Oscar" of the culinary world. In any case, my wife looked through the book and decided to make this bread. Ingredients : 1/2 cup cornmeal 1 cup boiling water 1 Tsp salt 2 packages of active dry yeast 1/2 cup warm water (100 to 115 degrees) 1 Tbs. granulated sugar 1 cup warm milk 1-2 Tsp salt 1/4 cup dark brown sugar 4 to 4 1/2 All purpose flour Directions : Pour the cornmeal and salt into the boiling water. Stir vigorously until it cooks and becomes thick. (You are basically making polenta). Before the cornmeal completely cools and solidifies, add the cooked cornmeal, warmed milk, salt and b

I have already explained how to make ponzu from citrus fruit somewhere on my blog. Here is how to deal with soiled pieces. かんきつ類からポン酢を作る方法はすでにこのブログのどこかで説明しましたが、ここでは、汚れた果物の処理の仕方を説明します。   1. Rub soiled pieces under running water and soak them in water for some time. Rub again. 1. 汚れた果物を流水で擦り、しばらく水に漬けておきます。再度、擦ります。  Still very soiled. まだとても汚れています。  2. Peel the rind. 2. 皮を剥きます。  3. Cut in half. 3. 半分に切ります。  4. Squeeze. 4. 絞ります。  You'll learn that your hand is the best tool for this job. この作業には自分の手が一番いいと分かると思います。  5. Separate the juice from the seeds. 5. 果汁と種を分けます。  My father and I drank the juice in the glasses. Sour and very refreshing! コップに入った果汁は父と私で飲みました。酸っぱくて、とても爽快です！ 6. Combine juice, dashi (for me, water + instant dashi), and soy sauce at your desired ratio (for me, 1:1:1). Add some dried bonito shavings (katsuobushi) and kombu (I simply left them out). 6. 果汁、出汁（私の場合は、水＋出汁の素）、しょう油を好みの割合（私の場合、１：１：１）で合わせます。鰹節と昆布を少し入れます（私は省きました）。   7. Store in the fridge. 7. 冷蔵庫に保存します。   There are s

Pork chops are a rather popular cut in the US. Most popular are loin chops with rib attached (rib chops). One weekend, I bought a rather large pork loin without bones. Since it was large, I decided to cut off 4 loin chops before I trussed and seasoned the remaining loin for our usual   hot smoked pork on our Weber grill .  I wondered how I should cook the chops and decide to use a Japanese recipe. I grew up with simply sautéed pork chops in Japan but I wanted to do something a bit different. After reading through a few recipes, I made modified Japanese pork chops. I served them with sautéed pencil green asparagus and  corn shuffle  my wife made unmolded and cut in half. The sauce also included onion and shiitake mushroom. I probably over cooked it and it came out a bit dry but the sauce helped. Ingredients : (for 4 servings). Four Pork loin chops (or rib chops). Salt and pepper for seasoning Flour for dredging Olive oil For sauce One medium onion, halved and sliced 4 tbs ketchup 4 tbs

I have succeeded in posting photos on Instagram from my PC by following the instructions on https://www.wikihow.com/Post-Pictures-on-Instagram-from-Your-Computer   パソコンからインスタグラムに写真を投稿することに成功しました。下記のサイトにある方法に従いました： https://www.wikihow.com/Post-Pictures-on-Instagram-from-Your-Computer   I'm h_312_312 on Instagram. I have no intention to post instagrammable photos.   インスタではh_312_312です。 インスタ映えする写真を投稿する気はありません。    

The day after our hanami was cold and rainy so we could not do another day of hanami outside. Since we had to finish up our sashimi salmon, I made a salmon "Zuke" bowl for lunch. I first sliced the salmon sashimi a bit thinner than I would if I was serving it as sashimi. I then marinated the pieces in a concentrated noodle sauce (from the bottle. I was a bit too lazy to prepare a "Zuke" sauce myself) for 2 hours in the refrigerator. Since salmon is rather oily, it did not absorb the marinade as much as tuna would. I warmed up some frozen rice from our stash in the freezer and dressed it with sushi vinegar for an instant sushi rice. I added the rice to a bowl (this was a baby size), topped it with the marinated slices of salmon. I garnished with sugar snaps (boiled and then cooled in seasoned broth. The recipe is from " Otsumami Yokocho " おつまみ横町 cookbook), thinly sliced green part of scallion and dried nori strips. As a side, I served cucumber and radish

1. Mentaiko (spicy cod roe) cream spaghetti 1. めんたいこクリームスパゲティ 2. Shoyu (soy sauce) ramen 2. しょう油ラーメン  280 yen. Quite reasonable. 280円。かなりリーズナブルです。   3. Curry and rice 3. カレーライス  280 yen. Quite reasonable, too. 280円。これもかなりリーズナブルです。   You can have as much fukujin zuke (red pickle on the right) as you want. 福神漬け（右側の赤い漬物）は好きなだけ食べれます。   I remember that when I was a university student, I often had curry and rice, which was 170 yen. I sometimes had katsudon (330 yen), which tasted so good, and had nigiri zushi (< sushi) (480 yen) once in a while. 私が大学生だった頃は、よくカレーライス（170円）を食べ、時々カツドン（330円）（とても美味しかった）、たまに握り寿司（480円）を食べていたことを思い出します。   4. Buta (pork) kimchi gohan (rice) 4. 豚キムチご飯  5. Chicken with cheese and tomato?? 5. チキン、チーズとトマト??  You can see part of the melon pan that my daughter mentioned earlier at the upper left of the photo. 写真の左上に、娘が前に話してくれたメロンパンの一部が見えます。

This is probably the very first cookie my wife made after we got married. She sent this cookie to my family in Japan and it was a hit. My mother and niece make this cookie using my wife's recipe. My wife has not made these cookies for a long time but she started to make cookies again recently and decide to go back to where she started. This cookie is called World's Best Cookie. This is a type of crunchy and crumbly cookie and deserves a name like the "World's Best". Since one of the ingredients is "corn flakes", I was sent to the grocery store to get a box. We have not bought or eaten corn flakes for many years and I was surprised to find that the smallest box I could find was quite large. Ingredients (#1 picture below, makes over three dozen cookies): 1 cup butter 1 cup white sugar 1 cup brown sugar, packed 1 egg 1 cup vegetable oil 1 cup rolled oats, toasted in the toaster oven 1 cup cornflakes, crushed 1⁄2 cup shredded coconut 1⁄2 cup pecans or walnu

One of the drawbacks of Japanese cuisine is that many dishes turn out quite salty because of the heavy use of salt, soy sauce, and miso. In addition, for every Japanese meal, soup, often miso soup, is not optional but required. If you follow the Japanese eating custom for every meal of the day, you will consume a considerable amount of salt. One way to reduce the intake of salt is to cut back on the amount of miso added to your miso soup. To do so, you can mix miso and sake kasu together in advance, like I did yesterday. 和食の欠点の一つは、塩、しょう油、味噌を多用するので、塩辛くなる料理が多くなるということです。その上、和食では、汁（多くの場合、味噌汁）は省略可ではなく、必須です。一日の食事すべてで日本の食習慣に従うと、かなりの量の塩を摂取することになります。 塩の摂取量を減らす一つの方法は、味噌汁に入れる味噌の量を減らすことです。そのためには、私が昨日やったように、味噌と酒粕を事前に混ぜておいてもいいです。   500 g miso (home-made miso, made by my father) 500 g sake kasu 味噌（父が作った手作り味噌） 500 g 酒粕　500 g   If sake kasu is fridge-cold, leave it at room temperature for some time to soften. 酒粕が冷蔵庫に入れておいて冷たい場合は、しばらく室温に置いておき、柔らかくします。   Adding some sake lees to miso soup, thereby reduci

Because of a recent Nor'easter, the  30 year old cherry tree   which was the main focus of hanami celebrations in our backyard because it formed a wide canopy of blossoms over the deck, was totally destroyed just when the buds were getting ready to bloom. Although some of the cuttings we brought inside did bloom the tree itself was a "goner". We had to replace it but the replacement was a young " Yoshino " 染井吉野 cherry tree only 6 feet tall. Luckily further back in the yard we have a cherry tree that we estimate must be over 50 years old. Even though it suffered some minor injuries from the nor'easter it rescued Hanami with its full bloom on a Saturday in April. It was very warm, even hot in mid-day on our deck particularly because we lost the shading canopy of the destroyed cherry tree. Nonetheless thanks to the old tree we still enjoyed "Hanami" 花見. We decide to defrost a package of salmon for sashimi which we bought for the New Year but did not e

Some years ago, when we remodeled our kitchen, and were exiled to cook in the basement for the duration of the construction, we got a tabletop induction cooker.  We also had a butane canister gas table top cooker from our days in California. Although we used it for Nabe and Sukiyaki dishes, the gas cooker and the canisters were almost 30 years old and we were worried about their integrity.  Despite their age, they seemed to work fine but we did not buy extra gas canisters after we used them up.  Although our Sukiyaki pot was cast iron and compatible with induction cooking, we could not use our Japanese "Donabe 土鍋" earthen pots. So I just cooked our nabe dishes on the regular gas range and served them at the table which is not as much fun as tabletop cooking. Induction cookers are much more popular in Japan than in the U.S. and are called "induction heaters" or "IH" for short.  As a result,  IH-compatible "donabes" have been available in Japan for

My daughter is now a student at a university of fine arts in the Kanto area. She recently sent me these photos. 娘は現在、関東圏の美術大学の学生です。最近、次のような写真を送って来ました。   1 Fried chicken & curry 1 フライドチキンカレー 2 Keema curry and small bowl of salad 2 キーマカレー、サラダ小鉢 3 Sandwich 3 サンドイッチ 4 Salt-grilled saba (mackerel) (half eaten)   4 鯖の塩焼き ( 食べかけ ) She added, "The melon pan at *** (university name) is super delicious!! It has plenty of cookie (on top) and has a mocchi mocchi (= mochi mochi) texture inside (meaning a sticky texture in a good way), and it has been the best melon pan I have ever had! それから、「***のメロンパンすっごーーくおいしいんだよ！！クッキーがたっぷりついてて中はもっちもっちで今まで食べたメロンパンで一番おいしかったのよー！」だそうです。 For those of you who are wondering what melon pan is, here is a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melonpan . Results of Google image search for melon pan in Japanese Note: This particular university has one school canteen on one campus and one cafeteria and one school canteen on another campus. In Japanese, "school