Mu-chi-(鬼餅) Day

We have a tradition of eating mu-chi- on Mu-chi-(ムーチー) day in Okinawa.

I can imagine that most of you are thinking,

"What's that? What's mu-chi-??"

Well, mu-chi- is a type of streamed rice cake wrapped in getto (月桃) leaves. Mu-chi- day is on the 8th of December in lunar calendar in Okinawa, and this year's mu-chi- day fell on the 11th of January. Traditionally, we are supposed to pray for the children's health and well being. There's an interesting story behind this tradition.

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Legend has it that there was a man who was originally from Shuri (首里), our old capital city. He was a lonely man (he lost his parents when he was very young, and his little sister got married and moved to another Okinawan island) and eventually turned into an ogre and attacked animals and children to eat every night. Nobody could do anything about it. His sister heard about this and decided to see him taking his favourite food - rice cake but put iron nails inside. His sister took him to the cliff and gave him the special rice cake. While he was suffering in pain, his sister pushed him down the cliff. So no more ogre! This event happened on the 8th of December (in lunar calendar) apparently. That's how this tradition started.

Mu-chi- day is also called mu-chi-bi-sa, and it's supposed to be the coldest day of the year in Okinawa. (Am I right, my Okinawan friends?)

By the way, kanji (or Chinese character) for mu-chi- is 鬼餅. 鬼 means devil, and 餅 means rice cake.

My family make mu-chi- every year. The photos you can see below were taken back in the early 2009.

Wish I were there to make and eat it..... If you are in Okinawa, you should definitely try it!! If you do, make sure to eat one extra for me and let me know how you like it :)

Hot Cross Buns

It's Good Friday today! Yesterday, I made Hot Cross Buns for the first time. Actually they are egg & diary free. I made them for my daughter who has food allergies. They don't look too bad, do they? I know they are not perfect, but my husband was very impressed with them! We all enjoyed home-made Hot Cross Buns :)

Happy Easter!!!

Hungarian-Style Meatballs with Tomato Sauce

I've got a Hungarian friend who likes Japanese cooking, and we used to exchange our recipes. I learned how to cook Hungarian-style chicken with tomato & paprika from her, and I used to cook it once a week or so. One day, I felt like making meatballs and decided to cook them with tomatoes. As I was cooking them, I wondered how it would be like to add paprika. It was a spontaneous decision, but I used paprika for this dish. It turned out to be really nice! I like changing recipes and being creative.

Beef Stew

Beef stew with demi-glace sauce is one of the popular dishes in Japan, and I wanted to make it for my husband.

As I was a vegetarian for almost 10 years, I had never made beef stew from scratch. I looked for a recipe for demi-glace sauce to start with, and I kind of created my own recipe.

I soaked some beef in red wine for a few days and cooked the meat with other vegetables. The beef was so tender and melted in my mouth. It was like a restaurant dish!

My husband was very impressed with it and enjoyed it thoroughly :-)

I will try to write a recipe for it some time.

If you don't know what demi-glace is, click here for information.

Ikasumijiru Teishoku （イカ墨汁定食）

This was my lunch when we went to Ohjima. You must be thinking,
"What's that in the big bowl?"
Have a guess. Yes, it's Squid ink soup.
It is one of the Okinawan dishes and is very good for your health.

If you would like to know more about the soup, click here for information.

Actually, I rarely eat this soup. It was the second time for me to try it. The taste was very nice, and my husband tried it :-) He wasn't too keen on it though.

As I was eating the soup, I found that my husband was giggling. I looked at myself in the mirror and burst into laughter. I had black teeth and lips!!! I looked scary. It's not recommended to try it on a first date.


By the way, this is southern mainland Okinawa. It's very close to Ohjima (Oh island). Isn't it beautiful? It was taken towards the end of October. As Okinawa is subtropical, the climate is very mild all year round. It gets cold around February, but rarely does it fall as low as 12 degrees centigrade or so. If you are used to living there, you feel really cold in that temperature. Everybody in Okinawa wears coats and scarfs saying "It's cold!" It's not a joke.

Sashimi Teishoku （刺身定食）

This photo was taken more than a year ago when we went back to Okinawa. I went to one of the small Okinawan islands called Ohjima with my husband and daughter. When I was living with my parents in Okinawa, my mother and I would go there to buy fresh sashimi which was caught on the island. You can buy good quality sashimi cheaply there, and we were often lucky enough to be given something extra for free, which was very nice of them. Nothing expensive, but something like fish meat close to the bone which makes really good soup etc.

Anyway, we went to one of the restaurants on Ohjima, and my husband ordered "sashimi teshoku (sashimi set-menu)" as you see on the photo. Isn't it gorgeous? (well, not for the people who are not sashimi eaters, I suppose.) It's very common to have sashimi with shredded daikon and Perilla (or shiso as we call it.) I love shiso! I like eating sashimi with shredded daikon and wrap them up with shiso. It's REALLY nice! You should try it when you have a chance.

The black stuff in a white bowl on top is mozuku (a type of seaweed.) As I might mention before, we Okinawans eat lots of seaweed. I have no idea how many types of seaweed is out there, but we eat it a lot. We are well-known for that.

If you ever have a chance to go to Okinawa, you should visit the island which is located close to Southern mainland Okinawa. (There is a bridge across to the island, so you can drive there.)

Bibimbap (Bibinba)

This is a famous Korean dish called Bibimbap (or Bibinba as we call it.) I found an easy recipe for it, so I decided to make it (it must have been more than a couple of years ago.) As I was a vegetarian for almost ten years, I had never tried this dish until I made it for myself.

It was really easy to make, and really tasty. My husband who had never tried it before loved it very much, and I ended up making it twice in a week!

I will write a recipe for it soon.

Cinnamon & Sugar on Toast

I like toasted bread, and my favourite toppings are marmalade, strawberry jam and cinnamon & sugar.

You might be thinking "cinnamon & sugar on toast?! What's that?", but actually it's really nice.

If you go to coffee shops or somewhere in Japan, you will see "cinnamon on toast" on their menu. Normally, they use extra thick slices of bread for toasts.
When I say extra thick, it's really thick.

Anyway, I had cinnamon & sugar on toast earlier, and it was lovely! What you do is just sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on top of buttered toasts. It's that easy.

If you like the sound of it, try it and let me know what you think :-)

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.

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..).

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 :-)

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.