When you buy a bunch of celery, what do you do with the leaves and thin stalks? You are not throwing them away, are you? I sometimes use them for soup and stir-fry, but this is my favourite way to use them up. Try it once and you will never waste the celery leaves again. …
This salad is seasoned with just Salt, Garlic and Sesame Oil. Yet it is so delicious because of the flavour and the texture of Soybeans. This type of vegetable salad, often seasoned with Sesame Oil, is called ‘Namul’ and it’s a Korean dish. Soybean Sprouts are available from many Asian grocery stores. This dish is …
There are two method for this dish. One is deep frying the eggplant and the other is shallow frying. I definitely prefer shallow frying, but you need fairly good mount of oil even for the shallow frying. This dish taste better when cooled to room temperature or even chilled. I generally don’t like too much …
In Japan, there are some seasonal dishes which are almost iconic. This dish is one of them.‘Furofuki Daikon’ is a classic winter dish. Very simple to cook but it takes time to simmer daikon absolutely tender. It is traditionally served with sweet miso sauce. You can use white miso, dark colour miso or whatever type …
When cabbages are in season, I often make coleslaw with different dressings or sauces. I tried to create an Asian flavour slaw. When you follow this recipe, you might think the amount of the cabbages is too much for 4 servings but it will decrease in volume and the flavour will become stronger. I use …
‘Sumiso (Su-Miso)’ is Vinegared Miso Dressing. This dressing is so good with boiled Octopus or Squid, and also fresh Konnyaku. Of course it is great for salad! My mother used to make iceberg lettuce salad with ‘Sumiso’. I use Wombok, ‘Hakusai’ in Japanese, for the dish instead. A popular dish for Japanese style dinner ‘Ichijū …
I love rice. Especially I love Brown Rice mixed with other grains including Wild Rice, Barley and Quinoa. It takes a long time to cook. So I recommend you to cook more than you need and freeze the leftovers. This dish is one of our heavily repeated dinner menus. My daughter made it first and …
I bought a bag of Black Beans from an Asian grocery store and have found out they are different from the ones available from ordinary supermarket stores. Black Turtle Beans are commonly called ‘Black Beans’ in Australia, but what I bought from the Asian grocery store are Black Soy Beans. My grandmother used to pickle …
The ‘Namul’, Korean vegetable dish, can be a great side dish which goes well with so may dishes. Many vegetables are in season now and I am making all kinds of ‘Namul ‘dishes. I particularly like this easy Broccoli ‘Namul’. Find other ‘Namul’ recipes here. Makes 4 Servings Ingredients Broccoli 1 large head *cut into …
There used to be a pizza shop near our house. An Italian family was running the shop and their pizzas were delicious. My favourite was ‘Vegetarian Pizza’ with anchovies as optional extra. This ‘Oven-baked Okonomiyaki’ has been inspired by that pizza. The shop is now owned by Chinese and their pizzas are sadly quite disappointing. …
Garlic Chives (’Nira’ in Japanese) are very hardy. They grow so well, produce plenty of seeds and spread even outside of the veggie garden. Every time my husband cuts the grass around the garden, we smell garlic! But this means we can grow them easily. In Japan, ‘Nira’ is considered a vegetable not a herb. …
Kale is easy to grow and has grown too well in my veggie garden. We can hardly keep up eating it. So I blanched a large bowlful of Kale leaves and made this ‘Ae-mono’ (Japanese style salad). ‘Goma-ae’ Sauce is usually made with Soy Sauce but I used Miso for this dish. It was a …