Family Cooking Tips

Archive for May, 2008

Japanese Cooking and You

If you have ever spent some time at a Japanese restaurant, you might have been quite wistful about the delicate tastes and beautiful preparation and never really thought about how you could integrate them at home. The fact is, Japanese cook is very straightfoward, and even if you don’t put the same amount of time into the preparation, it still doesn’t mean that you can’t have a great Japanese meal at home. Japanese food is very healthy, due to the fact that fish is the staple instead of the more fatty pork or beef, and if you are looking to integrate Japanese cuisine into your home cooking, there has never been a better time to start!

Rice is the first main staple that you need to acquire. Look for short-grained, sticky rice; you’ll be able to find it quite easily at an Asian grocery store, though you may also be able to find it at a large chain supermarket as well. Rice usually replaces bread or pasta and it is a healthy alternative, though if you are looking for the most healthy options, you’ll want to purchase the brown rice as opposed to the white variety; brown rice has only been partially milled at most and is chewier than white rice, though it is a great deal healthier.

One terrific Japanese snack that will remind you of sushi is the onigiri, or the rice ball. Cook up some rice and add rice vinegar to taste. Rice vinegar is both sour and sweet and it gives sushi rice that distinctive taste. Once the rice has cooled enough to handle, take a small handful of rice in your hand and make an indentation into it, into which you will put the filling of your choice. Some great fillings include bonito flakes, plain tuna mixed with mayonnaise, soy pickles and shredded dried pork. Then, pick up another bit of rice to top it off and compress the whole thing into a ball. Between these steps, you might want to wet your hands to stop the rice from being so sticky. If you wish, you can wrap the rice balls with nori. This is a great and extremely traditional use for leftover rice and makes a great snack.

If you are a devout meat eater, there are still plenty of Japanese recipes that will suit you quite well. Think about looking up a great teriyaki glaze for the next time you barbecue, or using tamari sauce in your stirfry. You can also try one of Japan’s most popular beef recipes, the beef bowl, also know as the gyu-don. Gyu-don is a dish which involves thin slices of beef and onion cooked in a sweet sauce composed of soy sauce and mirin that is then poured over white rice. This delicious and simple recipe is quite popular in Japan and growing in popularity around the world.

There’s no reason to enjoy Japanese cuisine only in the restaurant. Start simple and start learning about basic Japanese coking, and you’ll soon find that you’re able to turn out some truly tasty dishes. Get experimental and see what adding some Japanese cuisine to your menu can do!

Breville EW30XL Electric Gourmet Wok

Incredible burgers

2 lbs of ground beef
1 large onion diced
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper
1 tsp Garlic powder
1 package of sesame seed hamburger rolls

12 slices of each; aged Swiss cheese, mild cheddar, Monterey Jack cheese.

Mix all the ingredients with the ground beef, and grill to your taste. Add 1 piece of each cheese to the burgers.

Brush rolls with butter and grill till toasted.

Putting the burgers together is fun; first add mayo, lettuce, and tomato to the top bun. Put the cheeseburger on the bottom bun and put it together.

History of Candymaking

If you have a sweet tooth or you just love watching candy get made, you can’t deny that there’s a real charm to candy. For many of use, the obsession with candy starts when we are quite young, whether it was a treat our parents brought home or during candy swaps after Halloween, but there’s no reason to give up on candy as you get older. You might no longer be as infatuated with quantity, but you’ll soon find that with a little bit of searching, it can go up quite higher in quality. Take a look at some candy throughout history, and you’ll soon see that you aren’t the only one with a love for the sweet stuff.

There are some people who believe that the first type of candy was derived from the honeycomb that ancient men and women would eat from beehives. Honey is naturally sweet and people have been eating it in one form or another far longer than bees have been cultivated. All across the ancient world, from the Middle East to Northern Africa to China, people preserved fruits and nuts in honey; not only did this enhance the taste, it could also make the original sweets in question last longer. Fruit could be crystallized or dried in this fashion.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, sugar was very expensive, and thus sweets were a luxury reserved for the wealthy. In particular, white sugar, which had been further refined and processed, was expensive, and there was some indication that hard sugar candy in the form of lozenges existed. By the 1600′s, boiled sweets were popular in England and in North America.

Hard sugar candy really took off, however, during the early part of the 1800′s when sugar beets were discovered to be a cheap provider of sugar. The combination of this discovery along with the advance of mechanized factories brought hard sugar candy into production, though many people still made hard candies such as lemon drops and peppermints at home.

Chocolate, on the other hand, is originally derived from the cacao bean, which was first documented in use in Central America in 1100 BC. Cacao, as the Mesoamericans consumed it, would be very different from the chocolate that was sold in stores today; it was eaten entirely without sugar, often with chili pepper added, and quite bitter to boot. It wasn’t until sugar and milk were added that chocolate became the treat that we recognize.

Whether you are thinking about molding some beautiful chocolate roses for Valentine’s Day or you just feel like making some lemon flavor hard candy, be aware of the tradition that you are carrying on. Explore some of the ancient methods of candymaking and try them yourself!