A wok can be your best friend, when it comes to cooking Japanese dishes. Almost all Japanese cooking recipes will require a wok, which is a bowl-shaped, rolled steel pan. You can use it for steaming and frying, as well as other ways to cook your food. It is especially great for stir frying, as its sides are high, and your food will not spill.
A rice cooker is necessary, since Japanese food is best eaten with rice. A simple rice cooker will give you an easy time preparing rice. A bamboo rolling mat is also a great equipment for a Japanese kitchen. It is used to make sushi—you will place the nori wrapper with all the ingredients on top of it (such as rice, mangoes, cucumber, fish) and roll it inside the mat. Once it is fully rolled, you will unroll the mat and end up with a long sushi. You will then slice this into smaller rolls.

The Japanese have their own knives called hocho(包丁). It is best used for cutting vegetables. Whatever dish you wish to prepare, a good set of knives is always good to have. Japanese cooking recipes also almost always include the following ingredients: soy sauce, wasabi (for sushi), mirin (or Japanese rice/cooking wine), and chilli spices. Having all these in your kitchen will have you preparing outstanding Japanese dishes in no time!

Every year during December it is a cheerful period. The shopping mall is covered with those beautiful Christmas trees decoration, crazy mega sales and season greeting. Christmas Song is spread out in every corner since weeks ago, it telling me that my special day in also around the corner. Ya, Today, 23rd December is my Birthday and I am so proud that Japan Emperor Birthday ( 天皇誕生日)　also fall on the same day.   So, it is also a public holiday in Japan.

Home made birthday cake by PL

This year, we had a gathering at HG’s house. I’ve got a home made cake special made for me. Amazing taste, especially when it’s just out from the fridge, cool and not so sweet..Yum! Yum! Thanks PL for the delicious cake.

And this time I prepared a free and easy dish of Vietnam Style Fresh Spring Roll (ベトナム風春巻き).

Vietnam Style Harumaki

2 reasons why I prepared the dish; I haven’t taken the dish for years since my last visit a Vietnamese Restaurant in Tokyo. And since I have some rice papers in stock, let utilize it and to get back some of sweet memories.

It is a healthy dish (non-fried variety) that you can have either a traditional ground pork and shrimp or vegetarian rolls. Plump it with soft vermicelli noodles, lettuce, cilantro and chives, then wrapped in thin, resilient (never thick or gummy) rice paper. Then dip into the sauce (Thai chili sweet and sour sauce). Perfect!! Look at the image above, the shrimp seems to welcome you to have a TRY on the delicious dish!!

Ingredients

Rice Paper                                         Thai Sweet Sour Chili Sauce

For Filling:

3-4 oz dried thin rice stick noodles
Boiling water, as needed
3/4 lb boneless pork loin, in one piece
12 large shrimp, peeled and deveined

For Assembly:

12 dried large rice paper rounds, each 8 1/2 inches in diameter
12 large red-leaf lettuce leaves or other soft, pliable lettuce, stiff stems discarded
1 large carrot, peeled and finely julienned, then tossed with 1 teaspoon sugar until softened, about 10 minutes
1 small cucumber, peeled and finely julienned
12 fresh mint sprigs
12 fresh cilantro sprigs, plus extra leaves for filling
1 tablespoon coarsely chopped dry-roasted peanuts

Directions:
Prepare the dipping sauce; set aside.

FOR FILLING: Place the noodles in a bowl, and add boiling water to cover. Let stand for 1 minute. Drain, rinse with cold water, drain again and set aside.

Place the pork in a saucepan, add water to cover and salt to taste. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until opaque throughout, about 20 minutes. Drain and let cool. Cut across the grain into very thin slices about 2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. Set aside.

Bring a saucepan three-fourths full of water to a boil. Add salt to taste and the shrimp. Boil until they curl slightly and are opaque throughout, 1-2 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Cut each shrimp in half lengthwise, pat dry and set aside.

FOR RICE PAPERS: Dampen several clean kitchen towels with water. Fill a pie plate with cold water. Spread a damp towel on a flat work surface. Dip 1 rice paper round at a time into the water and spread it flat on the towel. Continue dipping and laying the rice papers in a single layer. When you run out of room, lay a damp towel on top of the rounds and continue, always alternating a layer of rice papers with a damp towel. Let the rice papers stand until pliable, about 1 minute or longer.

TO ASSEMBLE: Place 1 pliable rice paper round on the work surface and position a lettuce leaf on the lower third of it, tearing the leaf as needed to make it fit and leaving uncovered a 1-inch border on the right and left edges. Take a small amount (about one-twelfth) of the rice stick noodles and spread in a line across the width of the leaf. Arrange one-twelfth each of the pork slices, carrot and cucumber, and 1 sprig of mint on the noodles. Fold the bottom edge of the rice paper over to cover the ingredients, then roll up tightly one complete turn. Fold in the left and right edges to enclose the filling. Across the top length of the roll, place 1 sprig of cilantro and 2 pieces of shrimp, end to end and cut side down. Finish rolling up the rice paper to contain the shrimp and form a taut spring roll. Set seam-side down on a baking sheet. Cover with a damp towel. Make the remaining rolls in the same way. The rolls may be made several hours in advance; cover with a damp towel and plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Japanese Egg Custard ( ChawanMushi)

“Chawan” means Japanese style tea cup and mushi is steam in Japanese. Chawanmushi (茶碗蒸し) literally “tea cup steam”, is a Japanese famous egg custard dish. It is usually eaten as an appetizer with the main of egg mixture flavored with soy sauce, dahsi and mirin. One reminder when cooking the dish is do not overcook. It should not have too much air bubbles, not to be too dry on top. You will feel a real refreshed when you taste a well-done chawanmushi, especially the moment it “melt” inside your mount, amazing taste, Yummy! Yummy! It has a very soft and smooth texture which you couldn’t refuse to request for 2nd cup, like I always do.Ingredients: (4 serving)

4 prawns
2 shiitake mushroom sliced
4 slices of kamaboko fish cake
2 inch carrot sliced
4 piece of chicken or white fish (cut into bite size)
4 sliced carrot chive cut into 3cm
4 mitsuba leaf

For the egg custard mixture:

3 eggs beaten
2 cup dashi stock
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tsp mirin
water

Preparations:

Break the eggs into a bowl. Gently beat them by drawing Z letter or cutting action using chopsticks, not an eggbeater. This action will minimize the bubbles coming out while beating eggs. Add dashi stock little by little, and mix all ingredients above for egg custard mixture while stirring it at the same time. Prepare 4 chawan mushi serving cups with lids or tea cup covered with aluminum foil. Pour in mixture of egg with dashi stock. Place filling of prawns, shiitake mushroom, kamoboko (or others ingredients as you like) into individual cup. Boil water in a steamer with high heat. Place  cups into the steamer and lower the heat down to medium. Steam it for about 12 ~ 15minutes. Check the readiness by inserting a tooth pick from time to time to avoid over-cooked. If it comes out clear, then it is done. Topping it with mitsuba leaf.

Start Your Own Food Company

If you like to cook in Japanese cuisine and not sure what or where to get the Japanese Food Recipes, please always come to youlin’s blog. Sure you will get the innovative ideas from here.   This post is specially for the busy people that really do not want to spend extra time to cook, yet, love to eat Japanese food. What you need to do is shopping..Sounds easy, right? Ya, just go to grocery stores, supermarket and shop for some Japanese Instant Cooking Ingredients with various of delicious recipes. Then stock some at home. See the image above is what I stocked at home, in case I want to eat these, within 10 minutes I can get a plate of delicious Japanese Food dish. So, do more shopping for Japanese various kind of recipes. Easy, right?

Today, when we talk about health, naturally we will link it to diet in our daily life. This is really a big challenge in order to control our own weight in addition to take a nourishing food. Japanese always say “Dietto wa ashita kara!!”（ダイエットはあしたから）. Which means they will “Start On Diet Beginning From Tomorrow”, but, ended up keeping the same excuse to eat without diet. And I’d always been told that please take healthy food, choose the quality food rather than consuming in quantity.

That’s why, japanese recipes here provides you free a low calories recipe, quality japanese cooking recipe in order to rescue you out from Overweight Community. J

HEALTHY MUSHROOM TOFU STEAK (豆腐と舞茸のステーキ）

Ingredients (Serves 4 )

• 2packets (600g) Tofu
• 1 pack Mushroom
• 1 Garlic cloves
• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt & pepper
• Parsley

Method

# Why Tofu ?#

Tofu is low in calories, contains a lot of iron which is very important for women of child-bearing age. It has no saturated fat or cholesterol, so, you do not need to worry about getting fat. Depending on the coagulant used in manufacturing, the tofu may also be high in calcium which is a Must for bone development and maintenance. It is also rich of magnesium which good for athletes. Tofu also contains soy isoflavones, which can mimic natural human estrogens and may have a variety of harmful or beneficial effects when eaten in sufficient quantities.