ほうれん草/春菊のごま和え Spinich/shungiku sesame salad
* Key point for ほうれん草/春菊 is not to add any salt, it would take out the flavor from the leaves. The root is hard, but sweet. Cut into 4 vertically to make it small and easy to get boiled.
Boil briefly for 30 seconds, squeeze water out and cut to small, and add little bit sugar, soy sauce, 焼きいりごま, かつお is optional.

ほうれん草かつお醤油
Boil, dry, and cut ほうれん草 to small, and season with かつお kazuo flake and soy sauce

水茄子ときゅうりの酢物
水茄子 is water eggplant, suppose to be a bit oval, and very watery that could squeeze water out.
Cut both to straight half and then thin slices. Soak 水茄子 to water, and squeeze out later.
Add vinegar 2tbsp, mirin 1tbsp, sesame oil 2tsp, soy sauce 1tsp, roasted and crashed sesame 2tbsp at the end. Measures are rough, double the amount if needed.

Cabbage salad
There are spring cabbage and usual cabbage(older or winter cabbage), spring ones are very juicy and sweet that can be served as raw, here we are talking about not that raw ones. Steam cabbage to soft and cooked, cut to slices and squeeze out water.
Sauce 1: mayonnaise and lemon salt.
Sauce 2: miso, vinegar, lots of sugar, roasted and crashed sesame (white sesame is better, more oily and tasty)

Bottom of daikon near the leaves is the best, sweet. Front near the root is not nice and spicy.

大根きんぴら Stir fry daikon?
Slice 大根 and にんじん into thin strings, pan fry with oil, add soy sauce, mirin, dry chilli (cutted) and 焼きいりごま

柚子大根 Yuzu daikon

Cut daikon into 1cm x1cm x 4cm (3 fingers wide/long) sticks, leave it in salt (use finger to try the flavour, a bit salty is fine) for 1-2 days.

Discard the water came out from daikon when it turn soft, add vinegar about 1/4 of daikon enough to flavor, a bit of sugar and thin slices of yuzu skin. Amount of sugar and yuzu changes with different daikon.

* this is last year note somehow, mom doesn’t remember she had done such thing. (Make だし – sugar, (milin and sake maybe), yuzu skin cut to small pieces, boil well and add to daikon and leftover yuzu skin.)

紫大根のおろし

Mash daikon and add かつお、ちりめんじゃこ、ポン酢や醤油

粕汁

Boil water with 昆布 on small fire, while grilling salted salmon. Slice daikon and carrot, cut ちくわ to half and then slice.

Break 酒粕, mix with だし by sift and make paste.

Peel salmon, take small bones out and put big bone in as だし source. Add meat daikon carrot and ちくわ.

Mix miso(?) by sift, serve with 水菜 in red bowl.

蓮根肉サンド Lotus root and meat sandwich
蓮根 washed and skin off, cut to 2cm thick, sandwich in meat mince, or flavored mince, wrap with 片栗粉 corn flour, and panfry

大根葉・唐辛子・しんたけ・ちりめんじゃこ
This should be the recipe, but I’m not very sure when look at my own diary =(
Dry leaves first, cut to small pieces, then panfry with ちりめんじゃこ in oil with a bit of salt until soft in small flame. Add soaked and cutted しんたけ, and soy sauce, mirin, sake, looks quite dark color at the end.

大根葉・みそ梅・ちりめんじゃこ・桜えび・赤しそ・わかめ

赤ちゃんにんじんのふりかけ
This one, if it’s proper good one, they use baby carrots leaves only, since our resource is limited, we used all of the carrots.
Cut baby carrot to very big pieces, and boil with salt. Take it out in 10-15 seconds and cut to very small pieces. Boil leaves with salt as well and cut to small, add together with lots of mirin, bit of soy sauce and roasted and mashed sesame.

Favorite omrice/ tomato fried rice <3

Oil in the pan, pan fry small dice of onion in low fire until it turns brown, add a bitnof salt to fastern the process if necessary, add capsaicin small pieces before add rice in, since capsaicin get cooked easily, then add tomato sauce, and finish. Simple but effective, not good but everybody loves tomato sauce, and caramel onion increase the flavor.

梅しそ炒飯 Darling likes it, I’m normal

油、ちりめんじゃこ、ご飯、梅ソース。上にしそ

Talking about 漬物 tsukemono pickles, first thing in my head would be ぬか漬けnukatsuke, while Darling’s mommy makes good one, I found quite a good source from 白ご飯.com, it looks similar to Mommy’s recipe, here I just write down few memo for myself from Mommy.

1. To check the quality of the base, every time after mix the base from bottom to top twice a day, if hands are not smelly after wash, it’s good. The hands remain smelly after few wash, the base turns bad already.

2. Mommy sometimes put yellow melon skin in the nuka base for overnight to make the base turn sweet and good smell. Some times use good pair skin,? Maybe? It really depends though… She is too randomly creative 😉

or ぬか漬け大好き.com looks not bad too, but I haven’t read it myself yet.

All can store in boxes in fridge, and vegetable should get ready overnight

–Alternatives–

大阪漬け
Should be pickles of leaves of 大根 Daikon or かぶ Kabu, the parts which people usually chuck.
1.Wash 大根・かぶ, cut 葉 off, cut 大根・かぶ into thick pieces, together with whole leaves, dry a bit outside before cut to small to marinate, to take out the water, so the flavor get in easier and faster.
2. Cut 大根・かぶ to strings, and 葉 to small pieces, salt it for one or two hours, pressure it if in hurry, wash a bit if it’s too salty, squeeze water out before serve.

*Mommy always make ふりかけ with different root-vegetable’s leaves like 大根・かぶ・ふき、など, which not many people do anything with it.

酒粕漬け
酒粕＋塩＋砂糖

味噌漬け
味噌＋塩
Had tried Zucchini, carrot, red raddish
味噌＋砂糖
名古屋の味噌, leave it outside will turn it black. Add sufficient amount of miso to vegetable, add sugar to surface and leave for 1 day before serving.
Tried やこん and はやとうり

白菜の塩つけ
Chinese cabbage, wash well and cut into size that could just fit in ziplock bags. Add salt and press by heavy bottles/bowls with water, add two or three red chillies and leave it in fridge before serving. Wash a bit and cut into small pieces to serve.

紅白なます
This is a traditional new year’s dish, Darling barely likes it though.
大根・人参 Daikon and Carrot slice to thin strings, add roughly pinch of salt, vinegar 3 spoons, and sugar 1 tsp.

This post includes all recipe we use for organic brown rice.

玄米 Brown rice is not nice to have if get cooked as raw brown rice, usually we wash briefly with water, and pan fry with lowest fire for around 4 hours  (for three cups) in a flat pan, until it turns brown brown color. Leave a little bit of water at the beginning so the pan does not dry out, and stir all the time before water dries up. Afterwards, just stir/shake occasionally to make sure all sides get cooked. If use for tea, we can cook it until it turn quite black brown, same on lowest fire.

玄米茶 Brown rice tea for one/two
In a small ceramic pot, add water, brown rice, half 梅干 (Japanese Red Sour Plum), 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2-3 small pieces of 昆布 seaweed. Cook for around 30mins to serve hot or cold. But the amount really depends on people.

玄米ご飯 for one
Mill 70g brown rice for 10 second, so it breaks to small pieces but not fine powder, add to a small ceramic pot and 2 cups of water (more if you like porridge feel, less if you like rice feel), a bit of salt. Boil and stop the fire for one minute to rest, then cook on lowest fire for around 1 hour.

味噌玄米 for one
Same as 玄米ご飯, just add salt and one spoon of miso and preferred vegetable (大根、かぶ、人参、葉、など) at the beginning.

2013.08.27

1.大友煮干 (niboshi) *20 Remove head and inside black (Darling said the head is eatable though)
2. 1 Litre of water
3. Leave for overnight for miso soup the next day.
4. Add 昆布 (seaweed) and shouldn’t make it to boil.

2013.08.26

1.大友煮干 (niboshi) *20 Remove head and inside black (Darling said the head is eatable though)
2. 1 Litre of water
3. Leave for overnight for miso soup the next day.
4. Filter the 煮干, add small piece of 昆布 (seaweed), boil and add one spoon of miso, lots of ねぎ (spring onion) at the end.
*** Too much ねぎ flavor, not enough fish flavor and didn’t put salt at the beginning, was not as nice as before.