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Japanese autumn soup idea. Miso soup with Kabocha and Green beans.

Shiso Miso The Japanese love to have a selection of fermented and pickled foods to eat with their rice at dinner and today, I'm looking at one of the best - shiso-miso. It's a great way to give your miso a sweeter flavour. Shisomiso hails from Tohoku prefecture in northern Japan. The original version (where miso is mixed with sugar, sesame and/or crushed walnuts and wrapped in a shiso leaf, then fried) is quite salty but as it has become more popular in Japan, the flavours ha

Natto Just like marmite in the UK, natto is a food that divides opinions in Japan - you either love it or you hate it. So what exactly is natto? Basically, natto is made of soya beans fermented using natto yeast (bacillus subtilis) which I understand comes from rice straw. Natto is well known for its health benefits - if you want to find out more about this, you can find find lots of information on the internet - (personally, I make natto and I eat natto because I like it bu

Classic Natto and Rice I made my latest batch of natto last week & posted a "How to make natto" article on the blog - I hope you liked it if you saw it. Now that I've got a nice stash of the sticky superfood prepared, I'm ready to provide some ideas for how to use it to create some tasty and very healthy dishes. I'm starting with the "classic" way to eat natto - with a bowl of steamed white rice - this is widely eaten for breakfast in Japan but don't let that stop you eating

Onigiri-Rice balls.

Delicious vegetable tempura.

Pumpkin Kabocha Scones Younger Japanese (and not a few older ones) love Halloween. Millions of people strut their spooky stuff in Tokyo, Osaka and other cities in Japan on Halloween night - if you're ever in Japan over Halloween, you have to go and take a look - you'll never have seen anything like it! On a related note, I've been using some of my home grown Japanese kabocha pumpkins on perfecting a pumpkin scone recipe - if you've never tried pumpkin scones, I think you're i

Shisomiso and chicken Onigirazu and Natto and spring onion Onigirazu You might remember I posted an item on making shisomiso a couple of weeks ago. I put some of it to good use in some onigirazu, paired with chicken & spinach - super healthy & very tasty. At the same time, I also made some onigirazu using natto & spring onion - very yum also. These are great mainstays for a healthy lunch box, a picnic or just as a snack if you are on the go and in need of a nutricious energy

Of all the Western dishes that Japan has made it's own, I think doria might be my favourite.

Japanese meat balls - Niku Dango Here's a recipe which sounds better in Japanese, "niku dango", than in English - plain old meat balls! But Japanese meat balls - Niku Dango are actually far from plain - they're made of minced pork cooked in a sweet soy sauce. They'll grace any dinner table or you can just pop them in a lunch box for a nourishing midday meal. Alternatively, you can also put these on skewers & cook them over the barbecue. I've truly never come across anyone w

Natto Battleship Rolls Here's another recipe using the Japanese superfood - Natto. In this recipe, I use natto in a popular Japanese sushi dish - Gunkan Maki / Natto Battlship Rolls. So, first things first, what does Gunkan Maki mean? You probably know that maki = roll. Next, gunkan = battleship. So, gunkan-maki = battleship roll. Why? Because these sushi rolls are said to resemble the shape of a battleship. I know what you're thinking....I don't think they do either but th

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

Here's a one-pot winter warmer from Japan...Oden.

This is quick and easy way to make TemakiSushi at home.

Kombu Tsukudani OK, first things first. What is tsukudani? Answer: Tsukudani is a cooking technique that involves simmering ingredients in a soy & mirin solution until the liquor has almost evaporated. Tskudani is a great way of creating a very concentrated umami flavour. But originally, tsukudani was used as a method of preserving foods in the days before refridgeration. Nowadays, kombu is the most common form of tsukudani but you can also use the technique with other ingred

Menchi katsu is another example of a Western style dish assimilated into Japanese food culture at the turn of the 20th century.

Kikkoman Soy sauce You'd be forgiven here in the UK for thinking that there's only one brand of Japanese soy sauce and that its name is Kikkoman. It's true that the Kikkoman brand and its iconic hourglass shaped table bottle finds its way into most homes and restaurants in Japan. Kikkoman counts as one of the 4 big soy sauce makers in Kapan. that list also includes Yamato, Marukin and Yamasa that produce nearly 50% of Japanese soy sauce. But there is much more to soy sauce t

Here's my Japanese chicken doria recipe - just the ticket for a gloomy, soggy evening when you get home wanting some warming and comfort food.

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 corn soup Here's a quick, healthy Japanese soup for you to make. I always thought this soup was French as it is called "corn potage" in Japan. but the strange thing is that I haven't ever seen it made here in the UK or on the continent. So perhaps it is a Japanese original after all! Maybe calling it "potage" encourages us gullible Japanese to think it's extra special because it's French when it's really not! It is certainly more popular in Japan than elsewhere! O