Dinner on 31/03/08

Menu: vegetable soup with salmon

Whenever I need to use up the food in the fridge, I would normally make soup. On the night, I used carrots, celery, potatoes, leek, garlic, and added tinned salmon on top. It was really simple, but nice.

Lunch on 06/02/08

Menu: Somin champuru

This is one of the typical Okinawan dishes called Somin champuru. In Japan, they have somen (this white noodle) with a cold dipping sauce, but in Okinawa, we fry somin (means somen in Okinawan). We do eat it in a Japanese way as well, but we love this dish!

I simply boiled the noodles (don't boil them too long!), and riced them in cold water and drained well. Then I fried some thin sliced onions and added the noodles, tinned tuna (the one in sunflower oil), and sprinkled some spring onions and a pinch of salt to taste. Some people add soy sauce, dashi stock etc..., but traditionally we only use salt to taste. I sometimes use a bit of dashi stock, but never use soy sauce. I like the simple flavour of this dish.

Dinner on 01/02/08

Menu: Stir-fry on rice noodle with hot soup

I stir-fried cabbages, onions, carrots and shiitake, and put on the hot noodle. I will write the details later.

I'm off to do Christmas shopping now.

Dinner on 25/11/08

Menu: Roast chicken with lemon & garlic, roast potatoes and boiled vegetables

I made a simple roast dinner using the leftover from the previous night. I was out in central London and bought a pack of roast chicken at Marks & Spencer on the way back home. I was feeling a bit peckish and had a piece on the train :)

Anyway, I heated up the chicken and an interesting idea came into my mind - sort of caramelising with lemon juice and garlic in a pot. I know you can roast chicken with lemon and garlic, but I simmered lemon juice and garlic (I used garlic granules) in a pot and quickly mixed the sauce with the pre-cooked (already hot) roast chicken. I sprinkled black pepper to taste.

As I've been having a problem with my right wrist, I try to cook something easy these days. This was a really easy dinner, and really tasty!

Mushroom salad

Before I forget, I will write about the tasty salad I made a few days ago.
We had some white mushrooms which had to get used soon, so I thought of making something interesting, something different.
I know that it's quite common to use mushrooms in salad in the west, but in Japan or Okinawa, we don't eat them row - we normally cook them. Besides, mushrooms are quite expensive there, so we rarely buy fresh mushrooms. Well, as you might know, we have different types of mushrooms (e.g. shiitake, maitake, enokidake etc...); these are quite cheap, and we use them lots, but not the western ones.

Anyway, as I was looking in the fridge, yellow peppers and carrots caught my eyes. Then I thought of making mushroom salad using peppers and carrots. I cut peppers in strips, mushrooms in chunky pieces, shredded carrots, and made Balsamic vinegar dressing. For the dressing, I used Balsamic vinegar, virgin olive oil, lemon juice, black pepper to taste. And then, I thought it might taste better if I put in some fried onions. Yes, my guess was right. It was really nice! Fried onions and the dressing went really well together!

Sorry, no photos and a recipe for it yet.

Dinner on 26/01/08

I'm uploading some old photos now.






On that day, we went to a local butcher and bought some stew beef... and made......

Beef and ale pie!

It was really nice!

Dinner on 27/11/08

Menu: Okinawan-style noodle in hot soup with rafute

We had a chunk of pork in the freezer, and I decided to use it for dinner. As I mentioned before, we Okinawan boil pork to remove fat before using in cooking. We normally cook it for about an hour, wash it off with water, and use it in cooking. I decided to make rafute (the pork dish). I cooked the pre-cooked pork with dashi stock, cooking sake, sugar, soy sauce for a couple of hours, and added oyster sauce in the last few minutes. As I was boiling the pork, I felt like I might be able to make soup for Okinawa soba, and went for it. It was a spontaneous decision, and I had to use the ingredients in the house. Instead of using Okinawan-style noodle, I used rice noodles. For the soup, I used pork stock, dashi stock, a bit of cooking sake, a pinch of salt and a dash of soy sauce. As my first attempt, it wasn't too bad apart from the noodles. I didn't think rice noodles go well with this soup as the taste of the soup was subtle. The taste of the noodles seemed to be too strong for this soup. Oh well. I won't use rice noodles for this dish again. Next time I will try with Korean-style noodles or I might make noodle from scratch.