simmered pork and beans

I ate simmered pork and beans tonight. added green pepper. it tasted little hot. no salt, because the pork was salted pork I'd made. it's a simple dish.

smoking food part2

The other way to make smoking foods, using cardboard box. it's very cheap equipment. You just get 2 cardboard for this. and some spits and a pot to smoke the chips.

We learned to smoke small eggs, hanpen, shirasu, and cheese in this box. hanpen and shirasu are japanese foods. hanpen is a white triangular shaped food, one of surimi product. People use it in Oden and just into soup. shirasu is a tiny fish. it's also used as bait to fishery .

Each food is put in the box. the first is cheese. next shirasu on upper layer. the other box, we use 2 smoking box, egg and hanpen in it.


put the lid and keep the temperature. it depends on what you smoke though, about 2h to 8h at this time.


see those smoking foods. nice baked color. it's like cookies. The teacher said only hanpen is nicest to eat it fresh from the oven. shirasu is also wonderful. Everybody loved that.

smoking food part1

My friends and I went to Hayama to have a experience of making smoking foods on Saturday. Hayama is near Kamakura. It was a wonderful day in noon, little windy though. I enjoyed to seeing the seacoast from the hill.


This is the easiest and fastest way to make smoking foods. just get some sausage and chicken(put salt and pepper), put some smoking chips on aluminum sheet in the pan, and place those ingredients on plate and lid it. It will take about 30min to 1h.






See those golden color!! You wanna drink beer, don't you? Just made is nice. but wait after a while, It becomes more tasty.

boiled chicken and vigetables

I boiled chicken breast, asparagus, and potato. and I made gorgonzola sauce with shimeji mushroom. I also made soup with the simmering water after boiled those ingredients. added chopped coriander leaves. The soup was nicer than I'd expected. It was drinkable.

les airs

les airs, a Rhone wine made by Estezargues, a Southern Rhone Cooperative. They make wine naturally. no SO2. See this if you wanna know the detail. the taste was nice. very juicy. sweet, smell like fig and some berries. and smell little something herb. it's not so thick as the color. I like this wine.
Tonight dinner was pasta with gorgonzola sauce by the way...

simmered dish

I ate simmered lentils, salted pork, sausage and potato tonight, and salad. the dressing was balsamic vinegar.

pasta with salmon and bamboo shoots

I've cooked the ara part of salmon and bamboo shoots. "ara" is the leftover parts of fish in japanese. the ara is little oily, so that I used less olive oil, and used onion, green olive, caper, garlic, red pepper, and white wine.
Tonight dinner was a pasta with gorgonzola sauce by the way...

bourgogne

We've enjoyed a small wine tasting party. Tonight Theme was pino noir. Only Bourgogne wines though. It was fun. It would be more fun if we can taste them with the wine of the other countries though, there are less people. That's that.

First of all, We've relieved our thirst with a Champagne, Louis Picamelot. Just the shop owner was given by somebody. It's dry taste. It's nice start.



Nuits Saint George 2001, Les Fleurieres, Jean Jacques Confuron. The shop owner said it's one of old wineries. the color became lighter and the edge was already little orange, even though it past only 6 years.


Nuits saint georges 2000, aux crots, Domane Gachot Monot. younger winery. I've heard of that the vigneron is 30's and he used to get rid of cancer before. now, he is fine and wokring hard to make nice wine. I prefer this one to the earlier one. more tasty. It's only my description though, after a while, somehow, I can smell like mint from this wine. Is my nose wrong? only after flavor though. Does that happen in Pino Noir wines? It's the first time to get that smell in Pino Noir. Well, it's might be something wrong with my nose. Of course, no mint in foods.

Chambolle musigny 2001, Confuron. It smelt like coffee. and more tasty then earlier ones. the color was the same light as earlier ones. but the edge wasn't the same color as the Nuits saint georges 2001. Somehow, I forgot to take the picture. Perhaps, I will get it from somebody later.

Gevrey chambertin, Serafin pere & fils 1999. This is the most tasty tonight. still more acidity, tannin than the other, even it's the oldest wine of all tonight. seems still younger. very strong wine, I think.


Those honey are souvenir from one of us. she went to Paris for only one day by some reason. anyway, nice sounenir. I've given miel de chataignier. it's a chestnut honey, right? I'm looking forward to tasting it.

okowa with salmon and bamboo shoots.

There are some old mochi rice(glutinous rice) yet, so that I've cooked okowa with salmon, bamboo shoots, abura-age(made from soy beans), and zenmai(wild vegetables). You shouldn't use old rice whatever you can give flavor to it. The okowa made with old mochi rice is more like takikomi-gohan(steamed usual rice).

pasta with white shrimps

I ate pasta with shiro-ebi(small white shrimps), green olives, maitake mushrooms tonight. the taste wasn't bad, but I should've gotten the shell off. shiro-ebi is little bigger than sakura-ebi(tiny shrimps in Japan), so that I can eat it with the shell. Actually, I can eat it, but I feel uneasy little. those small shrimps tasted nice, even though it's small.

tonight dinner

I've cooked pasta with boiled tuna, dried tomato, green olives, walnuts, and spinach. Of course, I used garlic and red pepper. This time, I made it hotter. and I drunk absinthe. I like this pastis.

brand new by tomorrow

I listened his album after a long while, Money Mark, still the member of beastie boys? Wow, he is still great. cozy music.



P.S
I didn't know that he is also a support player for Jack Johnson!

beans and sosages

Tonight, I ate simmered beans, carrot, salted pork, and sausages. the salad was tomato, spinach, and mushroom. Just dressed with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vineger. It's simple salad. Of course, I drunk belgian beer. Chimay. The red label tastes mild and nice cherry flavor. a cozy dinner.

tonight meal

I ate pasta and boiled vegetables tonight. The pasta was made with gorgonzola, cream, ham, and spinach.

common curry in Japan

People cooked curry like this in Japan. There are many curry pastes here or there and it's easy to make curry. just use ingredients what you want, and added water, boil up, and added the paste after minutes. My parents prefer this curry to some Indian curry that I cook sometimes. They aren't used to eat those spicy foods. Well, That's okay. People serve this curry with some pickles like rakkyo and fukujin-zuke. rakkyo is kinda Japanese shallot. and fukuzin-zuke is.., well, see this. :P
And The salad was boiled lettuce and tofu. the dressing was aji-pon, which means a mixture of soy sauce, citrus vinegar and bonito flavour. very common sauce. people use it with Nabe cuisines, salad, and some foods. little sour, and nice citrus flavor. the aji-pon made in Mitsukan is popular, but some people get more nicer ones and little expensive.

avo

I've puffed the mini cigar of Avo.

tonight stir-fry

I've cooked a stir-fry with moyashi(bean sprout), the leaves of celery, pork, and soramame. I used garlic, ginger, nam pla, sake, sesami oil, and starch with water. it's for rice meal. and I cooked a soup with tofu, and the green part of nobiru(wild vegetable in Spring). the soup was based with the head of shrimps. where is the body of it? well, I ate it as today's brunch.

sunday brunch

I've cooked a stir-fry with bigger shrimps, celery, sora-mame(broad beans), and nobiru(one of wild vegetable in Spring). I used olive oil, garlic, red pepper, white wine for this. it's a dish for bread, not rice. a nice meal in a nice day of Spring. And I had a nice brunch with beer too. I liked that! Nobiru is a wild vegetable in Spring of Japan. it tastes like green onion. people eat some of the spring wild vegetables like this with sumiso sauce, which is based rice vinegar, miso, and sugar. You can use this sauce with vegetable and seafood too. Well, I'm gonna take a nap from now. Yawn.