Botamochi or Ohagi?!

I just found some information on Ohagi and am a bit confused. Were the rice cakes I made a few days ago Ohagi or Botamochi? To be honest, I don't know.

These rice cakes are Japanese sweets, and not Okinawan sweets, so I don't know much about them. As we have our own sweets in Okinawa, I'm not that familiar with Japanese sweets. There are some popular Japanese sweets in Okinawa, but we like our own sweets :-)

Anmitsu seems to be popular, but I didn't know much about it until a few months ago. I had heard of the name, but never tried it before.

I was at my Japanese friend's, and she made Anmitsu . My other friends there went crazy and got excited about it. They all couldn't believe it when I said I had never tried it before - I didn't even know what exactly was in it.

Actually, I have had Ohagi or Botamochi only a few times in my life, so I didn't really know if my Ohagi or Botamochi was good or not.

Pork Dumplings

dumpling pastry
vegetable oil
sesame oil
For the filling

200g minced pork

300g Chinese cabbage, finely chopped

2 spring onion, thinly sliced

1 small root ginger, finely chopped

1 small garlic, finely chopped (optional)

2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
A pinch of salt & pepper

Dipping Sauce

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp Mitsukan Rice Vinegar

A drop of S&B - La-Yu Chili Oil With Chili Pepper 1.11 Fl. Oz

1. Mix the filling in a bowl, add the sauce and mix together well.
2. Place a pastry in one hand, and put 1 teaspoon sized ball of filling in the middle. Wipe water around the edge of the pastry, fold in half, and pleat the top half.
3. Heat some vegetable oil in a pan, and place the dumplings close together, but not touching. Cook them over a medium heat.
4. When the bottoms of the dumplings are brown, add hot water until they are half submerged and cover with lid.
5. When the water has boiled away, add some sesame oil and fry until the bottoms are crisp.

Fried Aubergine & Green Peppers

I found this photo taken some time last year and thought it would be good to write an article about it.

I love having vegetables or fish without adding too much flavour - that way, you can really enjoy the taste of them. Anyway, I simply fried aubergine and green peppers (could be yellow or red peppers) in a frying pan with some oil, put them on a plate and sprinkled a dash of soy sauce, grated ginger and katsuobushi (Nishimoto - Dried Shaved Bonito Flakes). They are really nice, and my husband loves them. For vegetarian people, you don't have to use katsuobushi - just use soy sauce and ginger.

Ohagi (Rice Ball covered in Sweet Azuki )

I cooked rice too soft this morning, and I thought of using it to make rice cakes. For sweet rice cakes, we normally use Mochi Gome - Sweet Rice instead of using normal Japanese rice.

I made Koshian (mashed sweet azuki beans) using tinned azuki which I bought from Sainsbury's and mashed up the rice. I formed the rice into balls in my hands and put sweet azuki around the balls.

It turned out to be okay for the first try - but not amazingly tasty. It was spontaneous, so maybe next time, I will get the right recipe.

Rice Salad

This is the rice salad I mentioned earlier. You can add any vegetables you like. I like using mix vegetables, cucumber, tomato and parsley. We had the rice with ham - really summery, isn't it.

Actually, I didn't like rice salad before. I didn't like the concept of having rice as salad. I first saw rice salad when I was living in Seattle. I thought "Rice salad?!?! What's that? It sounds and looks weird" and wouldn't want to try it. I had the same feeling when I first saw rice pudding. "Rice with milk and sugar?!?! It sounds awful."

I came to like rice salad a few months ago. When I made the potato salad dressing, I thought "well actually, this dressing might go well with rice. The concept of mixing vinegar and other ingredients together with rice sounds like chirashi zushi (a type of sushi) ." Then I decided to make rice salad using the potato salad dressing. It turned out to be really nice.

It goes really well with meat or meaty fish (salmon etc..).

Simple Pasta & Potato Salad

This was the lunch we had a while ago. As we had a lot of tomatoes, I made a simple tomato sauce with some garlic, onion, salt & pepper to taste. I sprinkled some fresh basil on top. I love basil, and it is definitely one of my favourite herbs. As a side dish, I made potato salad using leftover chicken from the day before. I made dressing using olive oil, white wine vinegar, mustard powder and salt & pepper. This dressing is very useful and goes well with rice salad. The taste is very refreshing and summery. I will write the recipe for this dressing soon.