Ton Katsu (Pork cutlet)

This is something I had in Japan last December.

You can find pork cutlets at any Japanese restaurants in all over the world if the owners do not want to put it in the menu.
It's one of the most popular Japanese foods for sure.

I think that the popularity of pork cutlets for Japanese comes from the teste and also the name, "Ton katsu".
"Ton" can be written in a chinease character and means pork.
"Katsu" is a part of the word "Katsu retsu", which used to indicate all kinds of deep fried foods, according to a web.
So "Ton Katsu" means simply deep fried pork.

Another meaning of the japanese word "Katsu" is to win. This case, it is a verb. From this meaning, people like to have foods with "Ton Katsu" before an event that you cannot absolutly lose.
Some people have before college entrance exam, or others have before a big horse racing. The foods with Katsu can be "Ton Katsu", "curry with pork cutlets (Katsu curry)", or "rice bowl with pork cutlets (Katsu Don)".

It may be known that Japanese people do not have strong religious beliefs in general, but almost all people like beliefs that you can bring a luck by eating foods with "Katsu".

small hamburger

I went back to Japan last Thanksgiving and stayed just before Christmas.
It was almost one month vacation.
There were couples of things that I wanted to do for the long break such as renewing my student visa and attending a friend's wedding.

During the stay, I often went to Mos Burger, which is one of the biggest hamburger chain in Japan.
The picture is a combo meal, I remember, this is chicken something...
A combo meal is very similar at any fast food stores, but Mos burger now serves a combination of a hamburger, coffee and french fries and onion rings. You can choose an old style comb, just french fries.

Since I got used to an American hamburger, this hamburger at a Mos Burger looks really small to me!! It is almost cute like a toy. But price is real. This "value" meal costs about $5. It is a bit expensive for this small portion of meal. At other fast food stores like MacDonald, a combo meal is a bit lower price and a hamburger is slightly bigger.

It could be one of the smallest hamburger at any fast food restaurants...

Happy new year

It's been quite long time since I updated ths blog.
I am still maintaining the status of a student.

As one of my new year resolutions, I will re-start this blog.

If somehow you fine this blog, I would apprciate your comments or messages for this blog.


Hiroshi

Edamame beans

I think edamame beans are Japanese stuff, but surprisingly they have been seen many places such as Japanese restaurants and grocery stores.
In Japanese "eda" means a blanch of a plant and "mame " means beans.

Edamame reminds people of beer in summer season. It is like peanuts, buffalo chicken wing, or nachos. Something good with beer.

What I heard the reason edamame is famous in US is its high protein and low calory.

I found the package of the edamame in the picture at a Korean grocery store.
It costs $ 1.39. It's inexpensive so I often buy this one.
Since it's sold at a Korean store, maybe Korean and Chinese people eat this beans too.
The letter on the package is not in Japanese so this stuff is for Chinese, I guess.

Once I brought one bag of edamame to a party, but a Taiwanese friend did not know about this beans. It might not be consumed in Taiwan though we had a fun with eating edamame and drinking beer.



Edamame beans

Koshihikari, King of the Japanese rice

Not only in Rochester, but several kinds of Japanese rice whose shape is more round than jasmin rice have been sold in the entire U.S. Some of the rice brand are Nishiki, Kagayaki, and Tamaki.

There are no asian grocery store run by japanese in Rochester, I think. Most of the Japanese stuff are sold in Korian or Chinese grocery stores. I often go to a Korian store to buy a bag of Japanese rice, some vegetables, frozen foods.
Natto(beans, let's just say here) is not frozen foods, but here it is kept in the freezer.
I tried a couple of times and the taste is OK. It costs a little higher than that sold in Japan.

Last weekend I went to the Korian store and found a bag of Koshihikari (picture), which I never saw before. "Koshihikari" is very famous as delicious rice in Japan. As it is known, the price is a little more expensive than other rice brands.
Here a bag of japanese rice(20lb) costs around 12-15 dollers, but this Koshihikari weigh 15lb and costs 13 dollers. Honestly, the taste is the same as other Japanese rices....



koshihikari

Starbucks in Japan

I had gone back to Japan in the middle of Februrary even thought the school was in session.
It was my long vacation combining Thanksgiving, Christmas and New year.

It has been one year since I came back to Japan January 2004. Nothing changed much, but one thing that I noticed was a number of Starbucks coffee shops.
They keep opening stores in a city like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Fukuoka,...,but
there are few Starbucks in rural regions such as Shikoku island and Sanin region.
This makes people living in those regions think that having a coffee at a Starbucks indicates higher status of life. Well, I think Japan needs more Starbucks....

The picture here was taken at a Starbucks in Yokohama.
My breakfast was a tall coffee and ham and egg sandwich, which
this type of sandwiches cannot be seen at Starbucks in the U.S.
When I came to the US, I was confused that people call a cheese burger as a "sandwich".
That is because people in Japan call this bread and some ingredients like tomato in the picture a "sandwich".
There is usually no peanuts butter and no musterd, but slices of breads are very soft.
This sandwich is not only at Starbucks.

If you have a chance to visit to Japan, try this sandwich.



starbucks in Japan

Bagel sandwich

I did not know bagel is one of New Yorker foods like pizza (other than Chicago).
It seems to me that even in the state of New York, people prefer donuts, which
unbelievablely sweet!

Here, I cooked spinach, mushroom, and egg for lunch and
put it in the plain bagel.
My lunch often looks like that. This type of sandwich has bread or bagel,
some vegetables like spinach, peas, carrot,corn and cheese.
In terms of nutrition, it is not perfect, but ok, I think.



bagel

Japanese style Pasta

Spaghetti is of course one of the most popular pasta in Italian foods.
Change the taste of spaghetti itself is not easy, but the pasta sauce can be.

here, I cooked a little bit chicken, mushroom, onion, spinach, and grated daikon radish on top.
The taste of the sorce is seasoned with soy sauce.

Other than Teriyaki chicken, I think "Japanese style " indicates the dish seasoned with soy sauce. But it is not good enough to call it "Japanese ~~". The Chinese use soy sauce, Taiwanese use soy sauce. People use soy sauce!
So, in order to call my dish as a "Japanese style" one, I put daikon radish on top the spaghetti.
This type of daikon is often eaten in Japan.
Daikon helps digestion so that in old days it is treated like drag.

If you get tired of tomato pasta sauce, try this japanese style!


Pasta - Oriental taste

All nutritions from Potatos?

Potato is one of vegetables eaten a lots in all over the world.
However, it does not contain every nutrition that human body needs for its activity.
So does other vegetables. One species of vegetables can not be like a multi-vitamin tablet.
I thought that this concept is obvious, but it seems not.

In the movie,"Super size me", there is a interview to a high school student at the cafeteria.
She grabed fries and said, "This is my vegetable!".
If this is the only case that somebody said, I would not care so much, but
I had another chanse to hear the same opinion.
It was in the making film of the movie "School of Rock" starred by Jack Black.
When he grabbed a burger and fries, he said the same thing to the camera man.

It could be only in my family in Japan, but when I was a kid,
my mother told me that necessary nutritions for human body in a day are equivalent to
ones from 30 verious ingridients.
It is very difficult to use and cook 30 ingridients in a meal.

I guess there is no or little education about nutritions in junior high and high schools.

For a dinner, only cheese pizza? C'mon!

Soda is the one

Appalently, these are not Japanese foods.

I often send postcards to friends in Japan. Currently the stamp for a postcard to Japan is 80 cents. There is a pack of 80 cents stamps sold at the counter or vending machines in postfixes.
When you buy stamps at a vending machine, all the changes are coins, even 1 dollar.
I do not want to carry even a few dollar coins so I just leave coins in my car.

Today, I happened to find the coins at lunch time. I did not feel like cooking for lunch
so the picture is the result. I drove through Wendy's to have a bacon cheeseburger, medium fries, and small chili. I like this combination. It costs $3.22.

here in america, people like fastfoods very much. At lunch time, people make a long line to order "comb meals". Fastfood is not only main reason for obesity problems, but I think some of the ingredients that really affects people' health must be in this meal,
which I suspect is soda.

Coke, diet coke, sprite, whatever carbonated water sold contain awfully lots of sugar.
It is not about calorie, or fat. It's the amount of SUGAR.
Excising is necessary for diet, but also stop drinking soda.


a burger, fries, and chili

Oden

From my old picture album, the dish here is "Oden".
It is a vegetable pot in konbu stock with soy source.
This pot remids japanese people of winter coming.
The ingredients in the pot is called "Oden-dane", which literally means seeds of Oden.
Each person has favorite Oden-dane, which could be a good topic to talk.
It's got another name, which is "Kanto-daki". People living in Kansai or eastern part of Japan
use that name.

In this picture, I put daikon radish, fried tofu, white potatoes and konnyaku in the soup.
I think I served it at a student party. There were a couple of vegetarian and vegan among us so that there was no meat or eggs in the pot.
Also, I could not find some ingredients for Oden or other ones are expensive.

It is very subtle differene in Konbu kelp and katsuo(bonito) stock, which is used for miso soup, but konbu kelp is necessary for Oden.

Tofu is widely known now, so do eda-mame, I guess.
As a next healthy food from Japan,
I would like people to try Konnyaku. It is potato starch product.
It looks like jello. It could be substitute of meats in stir fries.
(here What is Konnyaku? in detail).




oden

Japanese style dinner

I think the meal like in the picture is a typical japanese home-style dinner.
We have almost always rice in a bowl at every meals.
Rice often comes with miso soup because sticky rice makes you thirsty.
Miso soup will be a kind of drink not to choke your throat with a chunk of rice.

Here, I cooked one stew and fried vegetable with rice and miso soup.
In the stew, there is sliced carrots, chicken and freeze-dried tofu (ko-ya) .
This type of stews is cooked in a soy sorse base soup(soy sorce, cooking sake, and sugar).
The stir fried vegetables in the center have green bell pepper, leek, bok choy, bean sprout, and the brown thing is a piece of fish cake that I found in a Korean market.

This picture shows another feature of japanese supper other than meals, which is the number of dishes. If a family has 4 or 5 people, doing the dishes is a quite work.
I think people like to separete meals in each bowl so that they keep thier own taste from mixing other souse even though mother spend more time in washing the dishes.

It took 30 mins for this meal.


Japanese style dinner

Roll Sushi (maki-sushi)

At the farewell party for a friend of mine who left Rochester,
we got together in my dorm room and brought some foods with them.

Sushi in the picture is "maki sushi (or maki-zushi)".
Here in the U.S., I often see roll sushi lapped with rice and a sheet of seaweed in.
That is not the sushi seen in Japan. Well, I am just saying it, and certainly do not mean
what is right or wrong.
I think maki-sushi rolled with seaweed is like a hotdog. It just makes easy to grab and eat without chopsticks. In old days sushi was not supposed to be eaten with chopsticks.
or I should say, the style in eating sushi with chopsticks was not considered a cool way.

Two kinds of roll sushi in the pic are
eel and cucumber (upper left), and
crab meat and avogado(lower right).




maki sushi!!

Oyako-don

It's a new start for me.
This blog is just a place to post whatever I want to write about japanese foods I cook and
some other stuff.
Since I am just a studnet who is NOT majoring in curlinary, the blogs I will write are going to be
very simple, not technical. I'm just a food enthusiast.

I have kept pics of my dinner for a while.
Today, as the first picture of this blog, I post a pic of Oyako-don.

"Oyako" means that parents and kids in Japanese.
In this meal, "Oyako" means chiken as parents and eggs as children.
"don" stands for "don buri", which originally means the bowl. But
nowadays, it means a rice bowl, meal on rice.
For example, a beef bowl served at "Yoshino-ya", a chain beef bowl restaurant
is called "Gyu-don" in Japanese.

The Oyako-don I cooked looks like too much ingridients.
If you go to japanese restaurant, a much more simple Oyako-don will served.

I just put more vegetables that have no strong flavor not to change original taste of Oyako-don.
It looks good, huh?




Oyako-don