Japanese food is relatively simple and easy to make, but you can come into problems if you aren’t stocked with the base ingredients. Luckily you can make most of the Japanese recipes if you keep a full stock of these ingredients. Some of them you may have to get at a grocer that specialises in Asian foods, but most you can pick up in the Asian section of your local supermarket. These arealongside other foods you should be stocking your pantry and refridgerator with anyway such as eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, flour, sugar, and other every-day spices.
Basic Japanese Ingredients
Short grain rice: I’m partial to the Nishiki brand, but you can try any brand.
Dashi soup stock: This is one you’ll have to travel to an Asian grocer for, or you can make your own using kelp. This is the base soup stock for most soup dishes, and the base for some of my favorite dishes like okonomiyaki and takoyaki.
Noodles There are so many noodlesused in Japanese dishes I can’t list them all quickly. Udon, somen and chukamen noodles are the most common noodles.
Tofu Whether you’re just eating it plain or adding it to miso soup or yakisoba, this is a great way to get low-fat protein in a number of recipes.
Nori Also known as seaweed. This is used in many soups, noodle dishes and as a garnish for tons of Japanese foods. It gives a light salty flavor to the food without a lot of sodium.
In my freetime tonight I decided to look up to see if there was any video of Japanese “ラジオ体操” or Radio Exercise. It took a bit of searching but I finally found a cute little video of a girl practicing in her apartment. This exercise was created in the late 1920s in Japan and is broadcast every morning on Japan’s public radio. Don’t worry about the voice in the background. that’s just the instructor telling you what to do next and counting off …
This week at the Evergreen a number of the editors have taken on a fad diet for a special dieting issue before Spring Break. Today I started my fad diet: the Asian Food Diet. I can eat nothing but Asian food for an entire week. I thought this would be a great way to eating Japanese food regularly again, which I haven’t done since I lived in Japan four years ago. I haven’t even finished the day yet, but I’m already craving cakes, cookies, pasta and all the other foods I can’t eat. I’m already tired of sushi, which I made for lunch and dinner today. I try to But maybe I’ll drop a little bit of weight. Oh well tomorrow should be better as I get into better foods and get back into eating Japanese food again.
In the meantime here’s some simple Japanese food recipes:
Sushi Rice:
2 cups short-grained white rice (note: you will need Japanese rice for this recipe. American rice is not sticky enough) 2 1/4 cups water
1/3 cups rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp. sugar
Wash the rice continually with cold water until the water becomes clear.
Let the rice soak in the water for at least 30 minutes.
Put rice in a pot and put on high heat letting the water come to a boil. Let it boil for one minute.
