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Japanese Spinach & Sesame "Goma Ae" This is, in my humble opinion, one of the best Japanese vegetable dishes you will ever try. It's very nutricious, low calorie, requires only a few ingredients and can be ready in under 15 minutes. Not only that it is one of the tastiest Japanese vegetable dishes I know. Sesame - both black and white - finds its way into a lot of Japanese dishes - it's used as a garnish (like this recipe where tosted sesame is used) as a salad dressing and

Sweet Soy Aubergine Donburi If you read my recipe blog regularly, you probably know that I love aubergine. I think it is a much under rated vegetable here in the UK, unlike in Japan where it is one of the most popular vegetables in the kitchen. Aubergine is good for you, it contains high amounts of anti-oxidants as well as plenty of trace minerals and elemtns such as folate, copper, magnesium and iron. Aubergine is also very good at soaking up different flavours. In this r

Simple and easy Daikon SaladRecipe.

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

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 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

Aubergine / Eggplant recipe.

Daigaku Imo Here's my recipe for a dish called Daigaku Imo in Japanese which literally translates as "university potato". There are various stories about why caramelised sweet potatoes became associated with a university - some say the dish was invented by a student struggling to pay his fees, others that the dish was first popularised by an outlet selling its wares to students at the nation's #1 learning centre, Tokyo University. My guess is that these potatoes appealed to

This is a quick easy salad recipe with the tahini create a really rich umami flavour when combined with soy sauce in this dressing.

This is easy and quick Edamame Salad.