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Healthy Japanese salad Recipe blog, Daikon and Tuna Salad with Sesame dressing.

Health benefits aside, eggplant / aubergine is also a great vegetable for soaking up flavours, so when I make it, I like to accompany it with a rich sauce

Roasted vegetables in a good quality olive oil makes a meat free meal more fillling and satisfying than simmering can and even if you not vegetarian or vegan, it is still a good idea to eat a few main meals every week without any meat.

This Stir Fried Sweetcorn, Sugar snaps and shiitake dish is deceptively simple.

Super easy stir fried beansprouts recipe.

Simple and easy Daikon SaladRecipe.

Stir fried Corned Beef and Sugarsnaps This recipe takes me back to when my first English language cookbook was published in 1994. The book was called 'Japanese Cooking for Two' and this recipe - "Stir Fried Corned Beef and Sugar Snaps" was one of the recipes inside. You might be thinking that corned beef doesn't exactly sound Japanese but it has quite a history in Japan - there is even a Japanese Corned Beef Day - April 6th! Corned beef became popular after the end of the Se

Quick and easy Japanese Tuna and Red Onion Salad recipe blog.

Here's a Japanese recipe to put the humble but healthy cucumber on top of the taste chart - Wakame and Cucumber salad in a Japanese vinaigrette.

This is a quick side dish that's tasty and nutricious.

Curried Okra This is the final dish in my "Japanese feast" feature which I started last week. You might recall that the other dishes were grilled & salted mackerel and stir fried lotus root. I must admit this dish sounds a little creepy in English, (old lady's fingers) but in Japan, it's simply known as "okra". It isn't indigenous to Japan but it is certainly popular and very easy to grow there. It's also a cinch to make this Curried Okra dish. Together with the mackerel and

Simmered Hijiki Here's a very traditional Japanese side dish that uses a seaweed common in East Asia but (as far as I know) nowhere else - it's called hijiki. You can buy hijiki in most Japanese and Chinese food stores, as well as health food shops, in its dried form. As with other seaweeds, there's a lot to like about hijiki nutritionally - it's high in magnesium, iron, calcium and iodine and is full of dietary fibre. I should point out that it does also contain traces of ar

Daikon and Cucumber salad My daikon and cucumber salad makes an ideal detox dish if you feel you've been over-doing the calories recently and want a few days of lighter eating. Of course, it's not only for detox - it is a light, fibre rich salad that'll be kind to your body and good for a guilty conscience! The salad is a simple combination of raw daikon (white radish / mouli) , cucumber and red onion, the latter soaked in water to sweeten its flavour - you can do the same wi

Japanese simmered Burdock and Carrot - Kinpira Gobo Here's another dish to give your body a nutritional boost - simmered burdock and carrot, which in Japan, is called " kinpira gobo ." Kinpira can be translated as the cooking technique of "saute + simmer". Gobo is the Japanese name for burdock root, which in the UK is best known as one half of the cordial, dandelion & burdock. Burdock is native to northern Europe and East Asia so it's no surprise that it has a long history in

Here's a light salad dish that's easy to make, healthy and, best of all, delicious!

Marinated Turnip and Choy sum I don't think there can be any doubt that the Japanese love their veggies - it's not uncommon for a Japanese dinner to include 2 or 3 separate marinated or pickled vegetable side dishes for the diners to consume. In the uk, the government advise a 5 - a - day regime for eating vegetables and fruit - in Japan, that's a whopping 13 - a - day and that's only the vegetables! One vegetable that is really commonplace on a Japanese table is the kabu

Let's give cabbage the preparation it deserves and turn it into a zesty, crunchy bowl of goodness that anyone can enjoy.

The Japanese love their eggplant/aubergine (or nasu as it's called locally). It's far more a part of Japanese cookery than it is here in the UK, which is a shame for the Brits because aubergine is very good for you. Traditionally, aubergine was thought to have a cooling effect on the body (because of its high water content) but modern science shows it's also high in vitamin B6 and C as well as minerals like potasium and manganese. Eggplant /Aubergine and Pepper Nabe Shigi N

Pan fried Celery and Shimeji with Bonito flakes Here's a big question for you. Are food likes and dislikes inherited or based on the environment? The reason I ask is that both my husband and I love celery and mushrooms but our sons won't touch either and remove them from their plate with a grimace whenever I serve them up. How did this happen? Answers, please! Anyway, today's dish is one I make when I'm cooking for one or two. I like celery when it is lightly fried and pai

Simmered Turnip with Fried Tofu) My latest post is another recipe designed to help you recover from the excesses of Christmas and New Year. This dish is called Simmered Turnip with fried Tofu. Turnip is a much under-rated vegetable here in the UK (in fact, more of it is fed to cattle here than humans which is crazy!) In Japan, turnip (known as kabu ) is widely eaten in raw, cooked and also pickled forms. It's very good for you, containing high levels of vitamins a, c and k