Fruity Coleslaw

This is a slightly sweet, creamy but healthy coleslaw.  My quantities make an awful lot (about 8 large salad-sized servings), but it keeps well in the fridge for about 5 days in a covered container.  Using Hellmans mayonnaise is very important for the taste; this is sold in import food shops in Japan under the Best Foods label. Actual weights for mayonnaise and mustard were guessed.

Nutrition Data (per serving)
Calories 100
Carbohydrate 16g
Protein 4g
Fat 3g
Dietary Fibre 3g

Ingredients
450g fat free yoghurt
1 heaped dessertspoon (30g) Hellmanns mayonnaise
1 heaped teaspoon (10g) wholegrain mustard
1/2 white cabbage
1 medium carrot
3 medium radishes
1 large red apple
25g raisins

Method

• Mix the yoghurt, mayonnaise, mustard and raisins together.
• Shred the cabbage, carrot, radishes and apple.
• Mix everything together in a large container, making sure to coat the fruit and vegetables well.
• Store covered in the fridge.

Tip

If you make, or want to make, a lot of salads, it is well worth buying an electric vegetable slicer.  Last year, I bought one intending to eat more salads but was worried that the salad motivation would wear off!  Actually, because it means that it's much quicker to make salads, I eat even more than I expected!

Sweet Chilli Lentil and Smoked Salmon Warm Salad

This is very filling and is high in protein and fibre.  The pomegranate seeds and chilli sauce give a lovely tang against the lentils, and the seeds look beautiful too.

In the ingredients list I've specified 200g cooked lentils, I'm not sure what the dry weight would be because I cooked up so many for the week!


Nutrition Data
Calories 384
Carbohydrate 59g
Protein 28g
Fat 3g
Dietary Fibre 19g


Ingredients (serves 1)
200g cooked brown lentils
1/2 red onion, sliced
50g spinach
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
40g smoked salmon
30g pomegranate seeds
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce

Method

• If not already done, rinse the lentils and cook them for about 30 minutes in boiling water.
• Meanwhile, cook the onions in the balsamic vinegar and some water until soft and caramelized.
• Wash the spinach and tear into the lentils.  Add the onions.  Mix in the sweet chilli sauce.
• Mix in pieces of smoked salmon and the pomegranate seeds.
• Serve warm or cold.

Sage and Onion Stuffing

When I was in England last summer, I brought back some stuffing mix, which I ate with some roast gammon on New Year's Day, and then cold over the next few days...

This gave me the taste again for roast gammon, stuffing and cranberry sauce (I'm using lingonberry sauce from Ikea) sandwiches.  Not having any more stuffing mix, I made my own today from some of my own bread that I hadn't eaten and had gone stale.  Here is the recipe.


Ingredients
180g stale bread (only because that's how much I had!), made into breadcrumbs
a good teaspoon of sage, to taste
1 medium onion
1 medium apple
25g walnuts
25g raisins

Method

•  Preheat the oven to 170C.
• Put the breadcrumbs into a large bowl and stir in the sage.
• Grate the onion and apple and stir into the breadcrumbs.
• Crumble in the walnuts, and stir in the raisins.
• Mix everything together well.
• Spoon into a greased shallow baking tray and bake for about 45 minutes until brown and crispy on top.

Tobiko and Soft Cheese Rye Bread

A straightforward snack!  Cut 3 slices of Delba Wholegrain rye bread in half.  Spread with soft cheese, and sprinkle a little tobiko on top.

Tobiko - Flying Fish Roe

I used to think flying fish roe (tobiko/tobiran) was not worth buying because there is a lot of it, and you only use a little in recipes.  However if you freeze it in small containers, it defrosts easily with no deterioration.

What is it like?  Well, each egg is tiny, less than 1mm in diameter.  They are hard crunchy sparkling red-orange jewels which explode in your mouth with a salty lemony taste.  They make a beautiful garnish.

This is about 40g for 298yen.

Scrambled Eggs on an English Muffin

I used to make scrambled eggs sometimes, using cream, as a special treat.  Using milk or cream, and cooking slowly was the method I used for a long time.  Then I discovered the Australian chef Bill Granger's recipe http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1720/perfect-scrambled-eggs.

Indeed delicious, and very quick too!  Incidentally I first went to Bill's in Sydney for dinner about 5 years ago and was very impressed.  A couple of years back I went for breakfast at Bill Granger's relatively newly-opened restaurant in Shichirigahama, the Shonan Beach area of Kanagawa.  This was the following day after visiting Enoshima.  By that stage it had been open for 10 months, I got there just before the opening time at 8am and had to queue for about an hour for a table...  Make a reservation!  That day I had sweetcorn fritters which I found a bit too rich for breakfast...  Apparently, he's now opened his 2nd restaurant in Japan in the Red Brick Warehouse in Yokohama.  http://www.bills-jp.net/bills_english/index.html.

However...  This morning I discovered a new and phenomenally quick method of making scrambled eggs, and I think I actually prefer them.  This is adapted from the British chef Nigel Slater.

Ingredients for one muffin
One English muffin, split and toasted
a small knob of butter
one egg
about 25g grated cheese

Method

• Over  a medium heat, melt the butter.
• Turn off the heat and beat in one egg.
• Stir in the cheese, turn on the heat again if necessary to finish melting the cheese and setting the egg, but remember that the saucepan is probably hot enough to continue cooking the egg.
• Spoon over the unbuttered muffin and eat whilst hot.

Spam, tofu and potato salad

This was tonight's spam dinner, and very tasty it was too!  Those of you who are sharp-eyed will notice a green olive in the bowl, that does not appear in the ingredients...  Yes, I love olives but they just were too much in this recipe.  The recipe is much better without them.

A note on the mayonnaise...  This should be a mayonnaise that you could enjoy on a teaspoon on its own, no cheap salad dressing here!  I recommend Hellmanns, sold in Japan under the Best Foods label.


Ingredients (serves 1)
New potatoes
100g spam, chopped
100g firm tofu, chopped
dollop of mayonnaise
good teaspoon wholegrain mustard
2-3 chopped garlic chives (nira in Japan)

Method

• Boil the potatoes, drain, then chop roughly.
• Mix the mayonnaise and mustard in a small bowl, then stir into the hot potatoes.
• Stir in the spam, tofu and nira.
• Serve warm or cold.

Spam

What can I say, I have a confession...  I've always has a sneaky love of Spam, despite the out-and-out derision it gets  in the UK these days.  My recent trip to Okinawa, where it is a common ingredient, re-ignited my love of Spam!  I predict that over the next few weeks, I'm going to be posting a whole lot of Spam recipes, inspiration coming from http://www.spam-jp.com/recipes/occasion/index.html.

Look at the photo - a spam riceball!

Chilli Gammon and Potato Stew

This was inspired by The Flavour Thesaurus and its description of a Korean soup called Gamjatang.  I googled Gamjatang and found that it was a spicy soup made from pork bones, potatoes and other vegetables and spices.

Not having half the herbs and spices, and not even wanting to cook with pork bones, I came up with this adaptation.  It was delicious, and hopefully the fermenting kimchi will have the usual effect of helping my cold!  All of the ingredients are according to taste...

Ingredients (serves 1)
1-2 potatoes
roughly chopped gammon
Stock cube
a bit of garlic puree
a bit more ginger puree
a tablespoon of kimchi
1/4 chopped white cabbage



Method

• Halve the potatoes and boil them in water with a stock cube until almost tender.
• Add the garlic and ginger puree, the chopped gammon, the cabbage and the kimchi, and simmer with the lid on for about 5 minutes until the gammon is hot and the cabbage is cooked.
• Serve immediately, steaming hot.

The Flavour Thesaurus

One of my brothers gave me an interesting cookery book for Christmas, The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit.  It's not exactly a cookery book; instead it's a commentary on food pairings, some obvious, some definitely not so obvious.  She chose 99 foods/herbs/spices and researched 980 pairings of them, and described them in mouth-watering detail!  And with the description of the flavour pairings come the ideas and the combinations...!  Thank you!

Making Mince Pies in Japan

This year I decided to make some mince pies for Christmas, because I find the shop-bought ones way too sweet!  As I didn't have much time, I did cheat with the mincemeat but if you want to make your own I recommend Delia's mincemeat recipe that I used to use in England.  Unless you have a 12 hole yorkshire pudding tin not something you'll find in Japan!), you will also need to find some shallow rigid paper or foil cases and a baking tray.    Tins for baking muffins are too deep.  I got my cases from my local DIY centre and Tokyu Hands.  Baking in cases does actually make it  a lot easier to freeze the baked pies.  You will also need a rolling pin and two cutters, for the base and the top.  I used a 7.5cm diameter round one (which was the largest I could find, but actually a little too small), and a star for the top.

To make these allow yourself about 3 hours.


Ingredients
For the pastry
200g plain flour (ie in Japan, not bread flour)
pinch of salt
100g butter
extra flour for rolling
a little milk to brush the tops
a little brown sugar to sprinkle

For the mincemeat (cheating)
411g jar of Robertson's Classic Mincemeat from Kaldi Coffee Farm
1/2 apple, peeled
30-40g dried cranberries
1 tbsp brandy

Method

• Wrap the measured butter in foil and put in the freezer for 30 minutes.
• Meanwhile, sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl.
• Grate the butter into the flour, holding it in flour and dipping it into the flour to make it easier to grate.  Stir the butter through the flour making sure it is well covered.  Add cold water a little at the time and bring the pastry together with your hands.  It should hold well together, but not be too sticky.  Add a little extra flour if you find you've accidentally added too much water.
• Wrap the ball of pastry in cling film or a plastic bag, and leave in the fridge to rest. 
• Prepare the mincemeat.  Scoop out the jar into a large mixing bowl, grate in the apple, add the dried cranberries and brandy and mix well.
• Preheat an oven to 190C.
• Spread flour on a work surface.  Divide the pastry into four smaller pieces to make it easier to work with.  I'm lucky to have a pretty big kitchen in Japan, even by British standards, but even so my largest work surface area is only a square with side 35cm (yes, I just measured!)
• Roll the pastry as thin as possible without it breaking.  Cut equal quantities of circles and stars.
• Put a circle of pastry in each case, and fill with a teaspoon of mincemeat.  Cover with a star and brush with milk.  Repeat until all the pastry is used up.  I made 32 pies, using up the mincemeat exactly and with a tiny remaining bit of pastry.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes and cool on a wire rack.  I had to bake two batches of 16.
• These freeze well when cooled.
• Reheat from frozen at 220C, covered with foil, for about 5 minutes.

Beef Casserole

Well, I've been busy so it's been a long time since I've posted any recipes. The temperature is now dipping below 20C so it's feeling cold to me now!  That, and I also finally have a long weekend to sort myself out and enjoy a bit of cooking!

Yesterday I decided that today was going to be a beef casserole day, something I haven't eaten for many years!  After reading various recipes and taking out the bits I like, here is the finished recipe! 

I have very happy memories of hot dumplings made with suet, but these potato ones are healthier, if indeed you can even buy suet in Japan!  You can add more vegetables as you like, but the carrot and onions are essential! No picture yet - because I didn't follow my advice about making sure the pot didn't run dry...  Just remembered it in time, still delicious but it was a bit too dry and caramelised!

Ingredients (serves 1 very hungry Alison with 2 too many dumplings!)
200g stewing beef
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, cut into 1/2cm discs
1 large mushroom, sliced thickly
1 tsp garlic paste
1 generous tsp marmite (you could use a beef stock cube)
200ml boiling water
2 medium potatoes
25g grated cheese
1 tbsp flour
2-3 tbsp maybe of breadcrumbs
1 egg

Method

• In a large saucepan, heat the vegetable oil until hot.  Add the beef and brown quickly on all sides.  Add the chopped onions and garlic paste and fry until golden brown.  Add the carrot and mushroom, and season with thyme and a good grating of freshly ground black pepper.
• Meanwhile, boil the water and mix with the marmite or stock cube.  Pour into the saucepan, bring to the boil, then cover and leave to simmer for one hour, adding about 100ml more of boiling water every now and then if you feel it needs it.
• After starting the casserole simmering, halve the potatoes and boil in water for 15-20 minutes until tender.  Remove from the pan and mash in a bowl with the raw egg, cheese, flour and breadcrumbs.  Season with freshly ground black pepper.
•  After one hour, shape the potato mixture into balls, add a little more boiling water, and lay the potato dumplings on top of the casserole.  Re-cover and continue to simmer for 15 minutes.
•  Serve immediately in a large bowl.

Zojirushi Breadmaker

I'm now the proud owner of a Zojirushi breadmaker.  This is something I've wanted for a number of years now, as it is impossible to buy wholemeal bread to my liking in Japan!

I used to have a breadmaker in England, and found it incredibly useful - it's even more useful here where I can't buy the bread I like!  There are many fantastic bakeries in Japan, some chain bakeries (notably Kobeya) and many independent bakeries creating both rustic country breads and breads with unusual fillings or flavours, but nothing quite beats a decent wholemeal roll!

I'll add recipes as and when I experiment...!  The recipes included with the manual encourage me to be really quite creative, but have needed adaptation to be suitably wholemeal - the wholemeal recipes they suggest tend to use only about 1/5 wholemeal flour, not really what I have in mind!  But although some bread hasn't risen quite enough, every batch I've made has been really delicious!

I'm going to post these recipes on a separate website that I'm setting up, mainly for my own notes, Bread to make your mouth water.

Gammon and Chilli Bean Vegetable Casserole

Nutrition Information (per serving)
Calories 147
Protein 11g
Carbohydrate 17.5g
Fat 3.5g
Dietary Fibre 5g





Ingredients (serves 5)
200g gammon, cooked and roughly chopped
1/2 onion (about 100g), chopped
425g (1 tin) Mexican Style Chilli Beans
1/2 white cabbage (about 280g)
1/3 kabocha (Japanese pumpkin, about 160g)
160g packet spinach, roughly torn

Method

• Put the chopped onion in a saucepan.  Soften in a little water over a low heat for about 3-4 minutes, until all the water has evaporated, and the onion is browned.
• Steam the kabocha in the microwave for 8 minutes.  Chop roughly, including the skin.
• Add the chopped cabbage, kabocha, gammon and spinach to the saucepan.
• Add the tin of beans, then fill the can with water to rinse it out, pouring the water into the saucepan.
• Cover and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened, and everything is hot.
• Serve immediately.

Carrot and Ginger Soup

This is a lovely refreshing and tasty soup, with a beautiful colour!

Nutrition Data (per serving)
Calories 61
Protein 1.5g
Carbohydrate 15g
Fat 0g
Dietary Fibre 4g


Ingredients (serves 4)
1 litre stock, made with a stock cube
500g carrot, sliced
40g fresh ginger root, peeled

Method

•  Crumble the stock cube into 1 litre of water.  Add the sliced carrots and bring to the boil, then simmer for 15 minutes.
• Meanwhile mash the ginger root in a blender.
• In batches, add the carrots and some of the stock to the blender.  Puree until smooth, and transfer to a large container.  Obviously the blender will get very hot.
• Put the mixed carrot and ginger puree back into the remaining stock and mix thoroughly.
• Reheat to serve, or I think it's better served ice-cold.

Note
This really is extremely refreshing ice-cold as the weather is getting warmer.  It freezes well, and yesterday I just took it to work still frozen and had it later in the day as a kind of vegetable slush puppy (ice drink)!  Delicious, and it's actually quite sweet too!

Egg and Potato Saute with Baked Beans

This isn't my idea, but is adapted from the BBC Good Food website's recipe http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5588/healthy-egg-and-chips.  I found I had to change a lot of the timings.  It is closer to sauteed potato than chips.




Nutrition Data
Calories 484
Protein 22g
Carbohydrate 83g
Fat 12g
Dietary Fibre 16g

Ingredients (serves 1)
150g new potatoes diced with skin (this is 2 new potatoes)
1/2 onion (about 100g), sliced and broken into semi-rings
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 egg
210g (1/2 tin) of baked beans

 Method

•  Pre-heat the oven to 200C.
• Put the diced potato and onion rings into a baking tin.
• Sprinkle over the olive oil and mix thoroughly.  Sprinkle over the oregano.
• Bake for 35 minutes until the potatoes are cooked and brown.
• Make a gap in the vegetables and break in an egg.  Return to the oven and cook for 8-9 minutes until the egg is set.
• Meanwhile reheat the baked beans in a saucepan.
• Serve immediately.

More bread-making practice needed...!

Well, I tried making Delia's easy no-knead wholemeal bread today, but couldn't get it to rise.  I used graham flour rather than wholemeal flour because it looked more suitably brown to me!  I think the mixture was too wet, and I didn't use quite enough yeast.  It tastes OK though, and is certainly brown, so not a complete disaster!  A bit closer to the vacuum-packed German ryebread that I buy than actual bread...!  I'll have another go soon - I think I can get optimal bread proving conditions under my kotatsu!

Oat, Fig and Nut Cookie Bites

Today I did two variations of these.  The first is the one that holds together better, and is easier to make.  These are a little like a cookie form of my trail mix, but use more nuts.






Ingredients (makes 12-14 tiny cookies)
25g coarse porridge oats
25g almonds
25g macadamia nuts
40g sticky figs from a packet
about 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Method

•  Preheat an oven to 200C.
• Put  everything in a blender, and blend until finely chopped and sticky.
• Form teaspoons of the mixture into balls and press into rounds.
• Put onto baking paper on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.
• Cool on a wire rack, and store in an airtight container.

Variation Ingredients
25g porridge oats
25g almonds
25g pumpkin seeds
40g dried apricots
1 tsp honey
about 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Note
Apricots aren't really sticky enough, and the pumpkin seeds don't bind so well.  Prunes would also work well as the fruit, I think, and other more binding seeds instead of the pumpkin seeds.  But the variation is also delicious.

Science Experimentation Day!

Sometimes it feels like my kitchen is my laboratory, where I create weird and wonderful dishes, sometimes it looks like that, sometimes it tastes like that too!  Those ones don't make it on to the blog, funnily enough...

But usually, I'm very happy with the results!  Today the plan is to create some new concoctions, so watch this space!

Easy Wholemeal Bread

It's very rare to find good wholemeal bread in Japan.  Dark German rye bread, yes.  But not wholemeal bread.  I've just found this recipe for very easy wholemeal bread, no kneading required.
http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/bread/how-to-make-wholemeal-bread.html
I'll report back when I've found the wholemeal flour and have a chance to make it!