Matcha Bavarois Cake

Matcha/抹茶, an ingredient readily available here in Shizuoka, opens the door to so many ideas as it can included in almost all cakes.
Moreover its green colour is an extra attraction that is difficult to resist!
Here is the recipe of a cake that marries western and eastern traditions!

Matcha Bavarois Cake!

INGREDIENTS: For a 21 cm diameter mold (can be adapted to square molds or individual molds)

-Sponge Cake:
Eggs: 3 large
Sugar: 70 g
All purpose flour: 40 g
Matcha powder: 1 tablespoon
Butter (unsalted): 25 g

-Bavarois:
Milk: 200ml
Fresh cream (vegetal): 200 ml
Egg whites: 3
Sugar: 50 g
Gelatin: 5 g
Matcha powder: 1 tablespoon
Water (to dissolve matcha powder): 5 tablespoons
Matcha liqueur (optional, but try and find it or replace with something else according to taste!): a little

-Decoration jelly (nappage):
Matcha powder: 2 tablespoons
Gelatin: 5 g
Sugar: 40 g
Water: 250 ml

Supplementary decoration (optional):
Chestnuts (cooked)
Black beans (cooked)
Candied mint leaves

RECIPE:

-Sponge Cake:
Separate the whites and yolks of the eggs, beat the yolks until thick and lemon colored, add the sugar gradually.
Mix matcha powder and sifted flour. Mix in butter by hand (with the tips of your fingers). Add egg yolks and sugar and mix well. Cut and fold in the stiffly beaten egg white.
Bake in an ungreased pan in a very moderate oven.
Bake until the cake is puffed, has lost its shine, and springs back when gently pressed.
Let cool completely and trim off to shape of the cake mold.
Line the cake mold with a layer of sponge cake.

-Bavarois:
Soften jelly in cold water or dissolve it depending on type.
Whisk the the egg whites thick and hard with sugar.
Bring the milk and fresh cream to boil.
Switch off fire.
Add matcha powder and matcha liqueur and mix well.
Let cool completely. Add and mix in gelatin.
Fold in egg whites.
Pour the bavarois over the sponge cake and leave in refrigerator overnight.

-Decoration jelly:
Soften gelatin or dissolve in a little water.
In a pan pour in water, matcha powder, sugar and heat to dissolve sugar. Switch off fire and add gelatin. Mix weel.
Wait until it has cooled off completely.
Take cake out of refigeraor and pour jelly all over.
Put back in refrigerator and leave it until it has properly settled.

Decorate further with chestnuts, candied mint leaves and black beans.

That is how it would look once cut.

The same as an individual cake!

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Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Lexi
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Bite Me New England
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Bryan Baird’s Newsletter (2009/11/11)

Baird Beer & Taproom Events Bulletin

Dear Taproom Friend & Baird Beer Enthusiast:

New Baird Beer Website Unveiling:

We are extremely pleased to announce the unveiling of our new Baird Beer website. The site has been designed by our friends at LINC Media who not only are first-class professionals but also top tier human beings. It is a privilege to work in cooperation with them.

The new site, in addition to crisply attractive design, simplicity of navigation and revamped content, sports several new features which include: individual Taproom blogs (including one in English for our Numazu Fishmarket Taproom), a photo gallery where you can view and also upload beer related pictures, and an E-shop where you can order Baird Beer and accessories delivered direct from the brewery (the E-shop will begin handling and processing orders sometime in early December). The site, including the E-shop, is fully bilingual. Please check us out at www.bairdbeer.com and let us know what you think.

Suruga Bay Imperial IPA Debuts as the Eighth Member of the Year-Round Baird Beer Lineup:

Imperial, or Double, IPAs are a stylistic creature of the American craft beer movement. Compared to a standard IPA, an Imperial IPA is higher in original gravity, higher in bittering units (IBUs), higher in alcohol strength and even more profound in the impact of its hop character (flavor, bitterness, and aroma). Origination of this monster IPA style is generally credited to Vinnie Cilurzo, the brilliant Brewmaster/Owner of Russian River Brewing (www.russianriverbrewing.com) in Northern California and former brewer at the now defunct Blind Pig Brewery. His wonderful beer, Pliny the Elder, is the best in this genre that we have ever tasted and it has served as our muse in the creation of Suruga Bay Imperial IPA.

Suruga Bay Imperial IPA (ABV 7.5%; IBU 90):

The first key to a great Double IPA is dryness of character despite the high original gravity. This is accomplished, foremost, through high attenuation by the yeast during fermentation. We aim for an apparent attenuation around 85% which yields relative dryness and alcohol strength. The second key is a fantastic and powerful hop aroma. This we achieve by dry hopping Suruga Bay Imperial IPA with several varieties of pungently strong American hops. We conduct this dry hopping not once but twice, in two separate tanks. Then, at packaging, to ensue a vigorous secondary fermentation and natural carbonation, we krauesen Suruga Bay with a percentage of peak fermentation beer from a different batch.

Suruga Bay Imperial IPA is a wickedly compelling flavor experience. Its hop character is as rich as Japan’s Suruga Bay is deep (it is Japan’s deepest bay and Baird Brewing is located on its inner shore). The greatness of Suruga Bay Imperial IPA resides in a supreme drinkability that pervades in spite of the potency.

Great pubs and restaurants (including all of our Taprooms), as well as fine craft beer retailing liquor shops, all over Japan are now carrying Suruga Bay Imperial IPA. The bottles for this first batch are of the large 633 ml kind but subsequent batches will be bottled in our standard 360 ml size.

Cheers!

Bryan Baird
Baird Brewing Company
Numazu, Japan
HOMEPAGE

The Japan Blog List

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Must-see tasting websites:
-Sake: Tokyo Through The Drinking Glass, Tokyo Foodcast, Urban Sake, Sake World
-Wine: Palate To Pen, Warren Bobrow, Cellar Tours
-Beer: Good Beer & Country Boys, Another Pint, Please!
-Japanese Pottery to enjoy your favourite drinks: Yellin Yakimono Gallery
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Sweet Potato Cupcakes

I need no say how cupcakes are popular all over the world.
That is the main reason why I from now and then feature a cupcake recipe.
Japanese-style cupcakes seem to be still new. They naturally come with different ingredients. Have you ever thought of making one with sweet potato.
Sweet potato is satsuma imo/薩摩芋 in Japanese and they originally came from Central America.
The recipe below is very simple and should be easily expanded:

Sweet Potato Cupcakes!

INGREDIENTS: For 2 large 10×10 cm cupcakes (can of course be divided into smaller ones)

-Sweet potato: 200 g
-Sugar: 30 g
-Dry raisins: 30 g
-All purpose flour: 50 g
-Butter: 60 g
-Egg: 1
-Baking powder: half a teaspoon
-Powdered sugar: a little

RECIPE:

-Set a microwave oven on “vegetables cooking” and heat the sweet potatoes. Peel their skins off. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

-In a food processor drop in flour, sugar, butter, egg and baking powder. Blend. Add sweet potato and blend.

-Add raisins and mix roughly. Pour into cups. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 25~30 minutes.

-Once baked sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Easy, ain’t it?

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One Frugal Foodie
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Today’s Lunch Box/Bento (’09/73): Rain Sushi Bento

Usually I do not take a bento to with me on Wednesdays, but the weather simply gave us no choice.
With a very unusual warm Fall in Japan this year, we are bound to be assailed by typhoon-like downpours. The bus was going through sheer curtains of water along the road. I found out that we got drenched with 100mm of rain in a single hour! Mind you, it does not compare to what the Philippines had to go through recently.

In such an emergency the Missus usually comes with some kind of sushi and plentyof vegetables.

Today’s sushi style was te-mari zushi/手丸寿司, a style very popular in the Kyoto area.
The rice balls are small, round and prepared by wrapping them in a piece of cellophane paper and then topped with various neta/ねた (toppings).
She made two kinds:
the first one with a salad consisting of surimi, shredded lettuce, capers, sesame seeds and mayonnaise. She placed them inside lettuce leaves for easing handling and supplemetary Vitamin C (!).

The second type which could be called Italian-style te-mari zushi as they contained cheese and were topped with Italian raw ham and Italian parsley (!).

As for the salad side dish on a bed of cress (grown in Shizuoka) she placed boiled brocoli, sliced radishes, plum tomatoes and a dessert consisting of rainbow kiwis (grown in Shizuoka).

Very healthy! I wonder if I should welcome the rain!

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Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
Zoy Zhang
Hungry Neko
Think Twice
Frank Fariello
Mangantayon
Hapabento
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Lexi
Culinary Musings

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Tofu Terrine

Tofu does have to be food exclusively for vegans, vegetarians and people with special priorities.
I can assure you that monivores like I are very fond of any any combination including tofu!

Here is a simple recipe that will impress your friends:
Tofu Terrine!

INGREDIENTS: For 4 servings

-Tofu (momen tofu, a bit mopre solid than kinu tofu): 300 g
-Wakame seaweed (salted preserves): 15 g
-Carrots: 30 g
-Sugar peas in their pods (or their equivalent. They are called pois gourmands in French, or kinu saya ingen in Japanese): 8
-Salt: a pinch (for boiling the veg)
-Mushrooms (white agarics): 3
-Broad beans (boiled or steamed) for decoration: 4

-Eggs: 2
-Soup stock: 2 tablespoons
-White wine: One and half tablespoons
-Salt: 1/3 teaspoon
-Pepper: to taste
-Salad oil for brushing

RECIPE:

-Break the tofu in large pieces. Boil lightly. Transfer into a large clean cloth and press as much water out as possible.

-Wash the wakame in clear cold water. Boil for a little while. Take out and press water out. Put it inside a clean cloth and press out as much water as possible.

-Chop the carrot fine. Boil a little and take water off as above.

-Take the “thread” off the sugar peas, boil in salted water. Let cool completely. Take off water and chop finely.

-Cut the mushrooms very fine (you may fry or boil them a bit if you wish to).

-Work the tofu in a suribachi (mortar and pestle) to obtain a smooth paste. Add eggs and mix with the pestle (food processing is fine, too). Add wakame seaweed, carrot, sugar peas, mushrooms, soup stock, slat and pepper, and mix.

-Coat the insides of 4 ramequins/oven cups with a very thin layer of salad oil and pour 1/4 of the mixture in each. Flatten the surface with a spatula.

-Place ramequins inside a steamer. Steam on a medium fire for 5 minutes, then 10 more minutes over a low fire.
Let cool down completely.
Wrap them in cellophane and keep in refrigerator until you serve them
Decorate with broad beans.

NOTE:

This is the basic recipe. It is open to all inds of variations!

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Frank Fariello
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Comestilblog
Greedy Girl
Bouchon For 2
Cookiesntea

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⑧ココット・ロンドにお湯を沸かし、スチーマーに⑦を並べて、湯気の上がったお鍋にセットする。中火で５分ほど蒸し、さらに弱火で７～１０分ほど蒸し、粗熱をとって冷蔵庫で冷やす。お好みでそらまめを飾る。

Panda’s Vanishing Act?

Just had some fun with another capuccino at Caffeteria Il Cuore!

CAFFETERIA IL CUORE
420-0035 Shizuoka City, Aoi Ku, Shichiken-cho, 13-20, Ishiwata Bldg. 1F
Tel. & fax: 054-2723737
Business hours: 11:30~23:00 (open every day)
Credit Cards OK

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Traditional Japanese Cake-Dorayaki: The Basics

Dorayaki, a traditional Japanese cake which combines many traditions and gastronomies has been a delicacy for such a long time in this country that it has expanded to the point of crossing all seas and oceans.

This posting is only a summary of common knowledge but I hope it will help many to understand the delicacy and make it themselves for the pleasure of all, adults and children alike!

I will eventually post a basic recipe for it!

Dorayaki (どら焼き, どらやき, 銅鑼焼き, ドラ焼き) is a type of Japanese confection which consists of two small pancake-like patties made from castella wrapped around a filling of sweet red bean paste (anko/餡子).
Incidentally Castella (カステラ, Kasutera) is a popular Japanese sponge cake made of sugar, flour, eggs, and starch syrup, very common at festivals and as a street food.
Now a specialty of Nagasaki, the cake was brought by way of Portuguese merchants in the 16th century.

It originally only had one layer, and the current shape was invented in 1914 by the Ueno Usagiya.
In Japanese, dora (銅鑼) means “gong”, and because of the simililarity of the shapes, this is probably the origin of the name of the sweet.
Legend has it that the first Dorayaki were made when a samurai named Benkei forgot his gong (dora) upon leaving a farmer’s home where he was hiding and the farmer subsuquently used the gong to fry the pancakes, thus the name Dorayaki.

In Kansai area, such as Osaka or Nara, this sweet is often called mikasa（三笠）. The word originally means triple straw hat, but also an alternative name of Mount Wakakusa, a low hill with gentle slope located in Nara. Many local people picture the shape of this hill while eating a mikasa. In Nara, a larger mikasa of about 30 cm in diameter is famous.

Probably thanks to the French Macarons vogue, modern dorayaki also come in various colours, with the bean paste, usually made of red bean paste and sometimes of white bean paste, replaced with creams of many colours.

Here in Shizuoka Prefecture which produces half of all Japanese green tea, they make dorayaki with matcha (抹茶) tea, both in the castella and in cream combined with the anko/bean paste!

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Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
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Greedy Girl
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Today’s Lunch Box/Bento (’09/72): PC Crash Bento 3

I finally got my laptop back last Wenesday, but I was still left to deal with a big problem: a mail box overloaded with spams.
It took me hours to first download more than 100,000 spams (yes, you read right, one hundred thousand critters), 99% coming from only two single bots (spam robots)!
It took me half an hour to erase them just to sse them coming back!
I was seriously thinking of changing my mail address, a bothersome affair if there is any. Luckily I do have computer-wise (the old geezer isn’t) friends who told me to consult my provider directly. Which I did.
The company taught how to deal with a Japanese language filter box (their services are in Jpanese only), but it still took them almost half an hour to clean my mail box!
Anyway, I’m a bit wiser and cleverer now, and I can resume my blogging activities in tranquility!

Since she also needed to be careful about her own weight, the Missus has decided to maximize the veg part and minimize the high-calories items in my bentoes from now on!

She steamed the rice withn vegetables including mushrooms and carrots that she mixed later with small pieces of fried chicken.

As for the garnish, on a bed of lettuce (grown in Shizuoka) she placed plenty of renkon/lotus root slices fried with black sesame, whole red radish (with their stems) and simple tamagoyaki/Jpanese omelette.

As for the salad cum dessert, on bed of shredded veg she placed a cople of plum tomatoes, pieces of jiro kaki/squat persimmon and some walnuts. She also added some lightly seasoned potato and cucumber salad for supplemetary calories.

Very tasty and just enough to hold on until dinner!

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Think Twice
Frank Fariello
Mangantayon
Hapabento
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles

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Vegan Rice Cupcakes

Just discovered this cupcake recipe for my vegan (I’m not) friends with the extra bonus of possible variations!

Japanese style vegan rice cupaakes!

INGREDIENTS: For 1 mug cup (arrange quantities accordingly for a greater number)

-Rice powder (Ris Blanc): 4 tablespoons
-Cornstarch: 1 tablespoon
-Sugar (of your choice, honey might be feasible): 1 tablespoon
-Baking Powder: Half a teaspoon
-Olive oil: 1 tablespoon
-Soy milk: 4 tablespoons

RECIPE:

-

-In an oven ramequin or mug cup first pour rice powder, cornstarch, sugar and baking powder and mix well.
Next add olive oil and soy milk and mix well.

-Depending on the kind of rce powder and soy milk you use, you may have to increase the amount of one or both for a smoother mixture. Experiment!

-Cook insid emicrowave for 2 minutes or more. Check by pushing a thin wooden or meddle stick. It should come out clean. The taste is light. You may add sugar.

-Have a good look at the cake while it cooks. It should not be more than 2 minutes 30 seconds.
If you use kabocha powder, you will need 1 small teaspoon plus 1 teaspoon of water.

-The above green cupcake was made by adding 1 teaspoon of spinach powder and 1 teaspoon of soy milk!

-Add 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder and 1 teaspoon of soy milk for a cocoa cupcake!

-Add 1 tablespoon of carrot powder and 1 teaspoon of soy milk for a carrot cupcake.

-Add crushed apple for the above!

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Frank Fariello
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Comestilblog
Greedy Girl
Bouchon For 2

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Vegan Tofu Lemon Cupcakes

This is a slightly different version of the Japanese style vegan tofu cupcake I introduced a couple of days ago. It will give you an idea of how to play on that idea!

INGREDIENTS: For about 16 cakes

-Tofu (kinu tofu): 180 g
-Sugar (of your choice): 0 g
-Soy milk: 3 tablespoons
-Lemon juice: 1 tablespoon
-Olive oil: 2 tablespoons

-Flour (use chestnut flour if you are wheat allergic): 160 g
-Baking powder: 2 teaspoons

-Grated lemon skin: 1 whole lemon
-Dried English tea leaves, finely chopped ( the contents of 1 tea bag is adequate)

RECIPE:

-Mix flour and baking powder well.
Mix soy milk and lemon juice separately and and set apart.

-In a large bowl drop in the tofu and sugar. Mix well until you obtain a smooth paste. Add the soy milk, lemon juice and olive oil. Mix the lot thoroughly with a whisker.

-Add the all flour and baking powder mixture and mix in with a spatula until floury lumps have disappeared, but don’t mix too much!

-Pour mixture into cups and sprinkle them with grated lemon skin and dried tea.

-Bake inside oven for 16 minutes at 190 degrees Celsius.
If you make mini cupcakes, 12 minutes should sufficient.
keep looking at the colour of your cupcakes!

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Frank Fariello
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Comestilblog
Greedy Girl
Bouchon For 2

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Matcha Tofu Muffins

Tofu and Matcha tea are considered for good reasons as health food here in Japan.
They can also be combinedinto a very European/American style cake: Muffins!

INGREDIENTS: For about 6 muffins

-Tofu (kinu tofu): 150 g (no need to press waterout)
-Egg: 1
-Wheat (use one of your preference): 4 tablespoons
-Cornstarch: 2 tablespoons
-Cream powder: 2 tablespoons
-Sugar: 3 tablespoons
-Matcha tea powder: one and a half tablespoons
-Butter: 15 g
-Baking powder: 1 teaspoon

RECIPE:

-Melt butter inside microwave oven.
Take out and pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius

-Drop all ingredients inside a food processor and process until you obtain a smooth mixture.

-Fill muffin cups with mixture up to nine tenths height.
(Pouring the whole lot in an oiled/buttered pound cake mold is fine, too)

-Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes (Check colour as all ovens have their own “character”)

-Let them cool completely.
If you don’t eat them at once, wrap them in cellophane paper and leave inside refrigerator or in a very dry box.

Best enjoyed with tea? LOL

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Frank Fariello
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Comestilblog
Greedy Girl
Bouchon For 2
Cookiesntea

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Baked Tofu Cheese Cake

One way to lighten your cheese cake and invest into a new taste is to introduce tofu!

Here is a simple recipe that will please anyone woorying about unwanted calories:
Baked Tofu Cheese Cake!

INGREDIENTS:

-Cream Cheese (Philadelphia): 230 g
-Tofu (kinu tofu): 200g (before pressing water out)
-Sugar: 70g (of your choice)
-Eggs: 2
-Vanilla bean pod: 1 (small) (if not available use vanilla essence)
-Soy milk: a little
-Flour: 2 tablespoons (flour of any kind is fine)
-Cornstarch: 1 tablespoon
-Biscuits (crushed to form a solid base under the cheese cake/optional)

RECIPE:

-Line the bottom of a oven cake mold with a layer of crushed biscuit.
You may do without it but it will help absorb excess water from tofu.

-Soften cream cheese to room temperature (you may warm it a bit inside a microwave oven) and mix with sugar.

-Once the cheese and sugar misture has become smooth, add the tofu by crushing it between your palms, addd the whole eggs and mix well with an eletric whisker until you obtain a smooth mixture.

-Cut the vanilla bean lengthwise and extract the inside (or use vanilla essence), mix it with some soy milk and add to the mixture. Mix well.

-The last three steps may be done with a food processor, but mixing all ingredients one by one give you a “right feel”!

-Pour the mixture inside the mold over the biscuit layer and flatten the surface with a spatula.

-Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Bake for 50 minutes r until you have obtained the right colour and a raising mound in the middle.

-If the colour even then is too white, raise temperature to 200 degrees Celsius and bake for 10 more minutes.

-Let cake completely cool down.
Only then may you take it out of its mold and leave it inside the refrigerator overnight before eating it.

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Frank Fariello
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Comestilblog
Greedy Girl
Bouchon For 2

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Today’s Lunch Box/Bento (’09/71): PC Crash Bento 2

As of November 2nd, the Kojima Company had not called me back yet to announce that my laptop was finally ready for me to collect. I had been without it for 11 days by then and for all the time suddenly found to write and read, I was really beginning to suffer from hi-tec retrieval!

I had requested the Missus to prepare a musubi/rice balls bento that time.
She came up with four different balls:

-One with Japanese-style pickled cucumber
-One with hijiki/sweet seaweed, sesame seeds and cheese
-One with pickled ginger and sesame seeds
-And the last one with umeboshi/Japanese pickled plums.

The tamagoyaki/Japanese omelette was of the plain variety. Just sweet enough.

As for the salad/dessert side dish she rolled wedges of jiro kaki/squat persimmon inside raw ham and place dthem over a bed of lettuce, cress, walnuts and black olives.

Very healthy!

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Think Twice
Frank Fariello
Mangantayon
Hapabento
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles

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Vegan Tofu Cupcakes

Cupcakes are the norm all over the world when it comes to bakery and tofu is a must for vegans.
Now, it is possible to make very simple cupcakes for vegans!
Wheat flour allergics can replace the wheat flour with chestnut flour like the Corsicans and Portguese do in their traditional food!
This is only the basic recipe to which you can add fruits and vegetables!

Vegan Tofu Cupcakes!

INGREDIENTS: For 5~6 cupcakes

-Tofu (kinu toufu): 300 g
-All-purpose flour (for substitutes, read above): 100 g
-Sugar (white, cane, or even honey): 30 g

RECIPE:

-Get ingrediens ready and pre-heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

-Mix tofu and sugar. Mix well.

-Sprinkle flour over tofu and mix roughly so as to leave a little flour on the surface.

-Bake for 25~30 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius or until desired colour.

-Dead simple, aren’t they?
Now your skills will reside in what you add!

RECOMMENDED RELATED SITES:
Warren Bobrow
Bread + Butter
5 Star Foodie
Frank Fariello
Elinluv Tidbit Corner
Tokyo Terrace
Maison de Christina
Chrys Niles
Comestilblog
Greedy Girl
Bouchon For 2

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Today’s Lunch Box/Bento (’09/70): PC Crash Bento 1

My PC (laptop) having crashed for the third time in the last four years, these bento reports are a bit late. This one was due on October 26th!
The PC being brand new at the time I purchased it and still has great speed. I’m reluctant to part from it, but I might soon be forced into a painful reconversion (Microsoft to Mac?).

Therefore I will call this particular lunch box the “PC Crash Bento 1″!
The same bento was consumed on a heavy rainy day to compound my misery, but I must say the meal lifted my spirits somewhat!

For all her grumpiness on that day, the Missus did not disappoint me:
After steaming the rice, she mixed it with hijiki/sweet seaweed, green peas and roasted sesame seeds.

As for the garnish, it came in all kinds of ingredients and colours:
She deep-fried (shallow-fried would be a more precise term) pork fillets sticks she had dipped in batter and then coated with broken fried soba (the soba was purchased fried, then dried and cold in package). She placed the pork atop lettuce and shredded greens.
Hand-made pickles (carrots, ginger, pimento) were added for the vinegary part.
Fresh plum tomatoes for the Vitamin C and the decorative note.
She boiled a few “sato imo”, a kind of sweet tuber typical of Japan. After peeling them, she fried them for a while in sweet sauce and seasoned them with black sesame seeds. Finally, a slice of orange for the finishing touch.

The dessert consisted of jiro kaki/squat persimmon wedges grown in Shizuoka and mini red-haert kiwi fruit, also grown locally.

Certainly a hearty lunch!

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