Making pork dumplings

Chinese food is very popular in Japan, and some of the dishes are commonly cooked at home. Dumplings (or gyoza) are very popular: there are different kinds of dumplings, but I think that pork dumplings are popular amongst them. They are very easy to make.

I remember making dumplings with my mum when I was living with my parents. Mum would make a filling, and we would put the filling in pastries together whilst chatting. I learned the tecnique from her, but I could never make pork dumplings as nice as hers.

That's me in the photo making pork dumplings when I was pregnant (it was twelve days before my daughter was born!) I was thinking of my mum as I made them :-)

I would like to teach my daughter how to make pork dumplings when she is older. That will be fun :-)

Dinner on 10/07/07

Menu: Tomato & vegetable soup; baked potatoes; rice

I felt like having lots of vegetables, so I made this soup. I put in onions, garlic, carrots, celery, aubergine, courgettes, kidney beans and tinned tomatoes. We had it with baked potatoes and rice. My daughter had the same.

It was a lovely evening, so we decided to eat in our garden, which was enjoyable until it became chilly. We went back inside and had a cup of tea which warmed us up.

Dinner on 08/07/07

Menu: Steak & ale pie with boiled potatoes & vegetables

My husband occasionally cooks, and when he does, he doesn't like being interfered with. If we are in the kitchen together, we always end up arguing! So, he doesn't want me to be in the kitchen which is fair enough.

I give him advice when he needs, but I try not to interfere with him. He likes taking control in the kitchen when he cooks. Although we have different ways of cooking, his food always comes out really nice!

On that day, he made beef and ale pie for everybody. He made three pies - a big one for his parents, a medium size for us and a small size for his grand father.
Every one of us loved this pie, and I'm sure it put a smile on everybody's face :-)

Dinner on 07/07/07

Menu: Miso soup; fried rice with salmon & chick peas

I had to use chick peas and tinned salmon, so I came up with an idea of making fried rice using these ingredients. I simply fried chopped ginger and garlic first and added cooked rice, salmon and spring onions.
I added a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil to taste.
It was very simple, but really nice. I had never used chick peas in my fried rice before, but they went well together. It's become my original recipe, and I will write the proper recipe for it some time soon.

Nabe

This is a typical and popular winter dish in Japan. This dish is cooked at the dining table. People sit around the hot pot and cook for themselves and eat. There are many kinds of nabe dishes - using beef, pork, chicken, seafood, vegetables, tofu, shiitake, mushrooms and so on. Sukiyaki is one of the famous nabe dishes using thin sliced beef and vegetables.

There are several kinds of sauce to go with nabe dishes. Ponzu(soy sauce and yuzu orange) and gomadare(soy sauce and sesame) are my favourites. Normally, we cook ingredients in dashi stock, and dip them in the sauce, but with sukiyaki, we cook it in a soy based sauce, and dip cooked ingredients in a beaten raw egg. It tastes really nice.

We eat nabe dish with rice, and cook udon (a type of noodle) with other ingredients in the hot pot.

I cook nabe dishes in winter, but never made sukiyaki here in England. I can't get hold of thin sliced beef to start with and am too scared to eat raw eggs in England. So, I always use chicken, tofu and vegetables.


Nabe dishes are very much a hands-on interactive experience, and this adds an element of fun to mealtimes.

I love nabe dishes, and so does my husband :-)

Chinese vegetables

We eat many kinds of vegetables and herbs in Okinawa. We eat Chinese vegetables which Japanese people are unfamiliar with as well. There is a history behind it.

Okinawa used to be the kingdom of Ryukyu which existed until 1879 when it became a part of Japan. We had a good relationship with China and used to trade with Japan, Korea and the Southeast Asian countries. For more details, visit this website.

Because of our history, we have many cultural influences from these countries, especially China. That's why Chinese vegetables are commonly eaten in Okinawa.

The leaf vegetable in the photo is one of the Chinese vegetables called "Unchee" in Okinawan dialect. We have our own names for each Chinese vegetable in our language. Therefore, we don't use Chinese names. These vegetables are only available in Chinese markets in the UK. We find it hard to recognise them because they used their own names.

A typical Japanese meal

As Japan is surrounded by the sea, we eat fish often. This is one of my favourite fish, rainbow trout, and I remember eating trout for the first time in Nagano.

I lived in Nagano for a few months when I was about 22, and I saw trouts in the local super market close to where I lived. I got really excited then because I had never seen trout before. In Okinawa, we have many kinds of seafood, but not river fish. I bought a couple of trout and had it two days in a row. I simply grilled the trout and had it with some grated daikon and soy sauce - it was delicious! Since then, it became one of my favourite fish.

When I have trout, I always like eating it with grated daikon, a dash of soy sauce, rice and miso soup. It is one of the typical Japanese meals. On that day, I had wholegrain rice, umeboshi (Japanese plum)paste, boiled spinach, miso soup, and of course grated daikon with trout. Both umeboshi and daikon help us digest food properly and kill germs, so they are great combinations with meat and seafood.

I'm glad that I can buy trout here in England.

Cooking and me

Yesterday I wrote the recipe for Chicken soup with daikon, which is one of my favourite dishes. I would say that it's a typical Okinawan dish because we like using meat, kelp, and vegetables together in the same dish, but normally we use pork instead of chicken. Actually, it's my mum's recipe. She improved the recipe by using leaf vegetable and chicken. It's nice with pork, but I like it with chicken in the soup. She makes it often, and it's one of those dishes which reminds me of home. I remember helping my mum in the kitchen when I was living with my parents.

Believe it or not, I started cooking when I was six! My earliest memory of cooking is making Japanese-style curry with my mum. I still remember standing on a small chair or something while washing vegetables and cooking
as I was still small. It was always exciting for me to cook with my mum.

One of the reasons why I like cooking is because I simply like eating. I like eating out occasionally, but you don't know what's in it. As my mum used to say "you are what you eat", I believe that it's very important to eat healthily to maintain our health. I don't want to eat rubbish food all the time. I sometimes eat junk food, but if I keep eating it, I feel sick. When I don't eat well, my body tells me what to eat. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't eaten enough vegetables for a few days, and I started feeling sick. I could tell that my body needed vegetables, so I made a vegetable soup which made me feel better.

I really appreciate what my mum taught me in terms of cooking and healthy eating.

Chicken Soup with Daikon

Serves 4

600g chicken thighs (or drumsticks)

600g daikon chunky slices and cut those in half

10 mustard greens boiled for 20 seconds, squeeze out the water, and cut them in 5cm pieces

50g dried konbu (kelp) soaked in water

2 liters dashi stock

1/4 liter cooking sake
1 small root ginger cut in slices

1/2 tsp soy sauce

sea salt to taste

1. Put the chicken in the boiled water and then rinse.
2. Tie the kelp into knots 10cm apart and cut between the knots.
3. Boil the daikon until soften, drain and put them aside.
4. In a large saucepan, pour over the stock, add ginger, chicken, kelp, sake and bring to the boil skimming off any scum which floats on the surface.
5. Reduce the heat to low/moderate and cook until the ingredients are soft.
6. Add soy sauce and salt to taste. Add the boiled daikon and cook until the soup is soaked in. Add the boiled greens towards the end.　　

*Pak choi or spinach can be used instead of mustard greens.

Ju-shi (Okinawan-Style Pork Rice)

Serves 4

3 cups of short-grain rice
2 dried shiitake, chopped finely after being soaked in water
1 small carrot, chopped finely
1 spring onion, thinly sliced
120g pork, chopped finely after being boiled for 30min.
A total of 3 cups of dashi stock and pork stock

Sauce
2tbsp soy sauce
3tbsp oyster sauce

1. Wash the rice and put shiitake, carrot, pork, sauce and water into the pot. Mix them altogether.
2. Cook the rice.
3. When it's cooked, mix the rice and add spring onion. Mix and let it simmer for 5-10 minutes.
   

Okinawan dishes

I found this photo taken a while ago. Apart from miso soup, three other dishes are typical Okinawan dishes. The rice dish is called "Ju-shi" which contains pork, carrots, shiitake and spring onion. I added hijiki, a type of seaweed, that time. The carrot dish is called "Ninjin shirishiri" which contains carrots and eggs. The other dish you can't see clearly is actually a pork dish called "Rafute."

I love those three dishes.

As you might notice, we have many pork dishes in Okinawa. We eat almost every part of the pig - even pig's ears! It might sound disgusting, but actually really nice and crunchy :-) When we have pork, we always boil it and wash off excess fat and boil again. I do that a few times to remove fat when I use pork in cooking. Traditionally, we eat pork with lots of other vegetables and seaweed, so pork would a small portion of the meal. (especially, in pre-war time, pork was eaten only on special occasions.)

We eat a big portion of seaweed, vegetables, herbs, tofu (Okinawan tofu is the best!), and have many kinds of dishes which are different from Japanese.

I will write more recipes for our dishes.

Dinner on 05/07/07

Menu: Fried vegetable noodle; tinned salmon with cucumber & radish

We are running out of vegetables, but I found bits and pieces and managed to make a really nice fried noodle. As we don't have fresh carrots anymore, I decided to use frozen mix vegetables which contains carrots. I used fresh green peppers, onions, spring onions, ginger, garlic, cabbage as well as some dried shiitake (a type of mashroom.) I was going to put tinned salmon in it, but I thought it was nice as it was, so decided not to. Instead, I made a simple salad with cucumber, radish and spring onion on top.

I used rice noodle which I bought from a Chinese market the other day. A bag of rice noodle only costs about 55p or so, and it was really tasty. I should get some more and use it often. As my daughter has a wheat allergy, I'm trying to avoid wheat products and find alternatives. I don't think I had bought rice noodle when I was in Okinawa, but I really like it.

We truly enjoyed our dinner. I will write the recipe soon.

Dinner on 04/07/07

Menu: Pot-au-feu

We had a pack of sausages which my husband had opened last Saturday, so I made Pot-au-feu using the vegetables in the fridge.

I make this soup whenever we have some meat and vegetables which have to be used up - it's very simple, but very tasty.

I used sausages, potatoes, Chinese cabbage, cabbage, onions, garlic and celery. We had it with wholegrain mustard.

Dinner on 03/07/07

Menu: Fried cod; fried cabbage with ginger; fried rice; tomatoes; radish; miso soup

We had a pack of cod fillets in the freezer, and I decided to use them for dinner. Well, actually, it was my husband's request. I found some pork ham in the fridge which my husband had bought a few days ago, so I made fried rice. This time, I used brown rice instead of normal rice. I had never made fried rice with brown rice before, but it was really nice. I used onions, green peppers, garlic, ginger, frozen mix vegetables, spring onion and ham for the fried rice.

For the cod, I put on some salt & pepper and fried it. We sprinkled some lemon juice on it just before eating it. It was nice and simple.

We had a bowl of miso soup as well.

Lunch on 02/07/07

I looked in the fridge to see what I had and could use for my lunch. I had some leftover tuna in oil to use. I saw a cabbage in the back of the fridge. So, I made cabbage & tuna stir-fry.

It's really easy to make. I just fried cabbage in tuna oil and added tuna towards the end. I didn't even bother adding sauce or seasoning. It was delicious as it was. I put in some Chinese five spices to see if it's nice. Yes, it was nice! There was a fair amount of cabbage, but it was shrank while being cooked. In that way, you can eat lots of vegetables.

I had it with a bowl of rice. I enjoyed my lunch :-)

Pork Soup

Last Saturday, I heard that my mother in law was ill, so I decided to make some soup for her. When you are ill, you don't want to think about food or cooking. In my case, I feel homesick everytime I'm ill. When I was back home, there was always somebody to look after me, making nice soup or a meal. It's just a lovely feeling that somebody cares for me.

I remember that my mum used to make the soup called "Chimushinji" which is good for colds. In Chimushinji, we use pork liver, pork, yellow carrots, lots of garlic and sometimes, miso paste. It's a quite well-known soup in Okinawa. My grandmother used to make it for my mum.

Anyway, I didn't have pork liver, so I just used pork. I changed the recipe a bit and made my own version of it. I used Chinese cooking sake, leek, garlic and pork. I saved some for my husband and put ginger in the soup. (my mother in law doesn't like ginger, so I didn't use it.)

I think that the soup is the best food to eat when you don't feel well and haven't got much appetite.