Just Hungry - Japanese recipes, healthy and fun eating, the expat food life and more.

Different types of Japanese tsukemono pickles, and how some may not be worth the hassle to make yourself

maki — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:24:33 +0200

Periodically, someone asks about Japanese pickles - those crunchy, salty, sweet-sour, even spicy bits of goodness that accompany a traditional meal, especially breakfast. There are a big variety of Japanese pickles, and sooner or later you might consider making them.

Some time ago I did a week-long series on making instant, or overnight pickles. These pickles can be made very quickly, usually with ingredients that are easy to get a hold of. If you want to try your hand at Japanese style pickles, I recommend starting there. There are also a couple of cookbooks in English dedicated to quick and easy pickles, both of which are quite good: Quick and Easy Tsukemono: Japanese Pickling Recipes by Ikuko Hisamatsu, and Easy Japanese Pickling in Five Minutes to One Day: 101 Full-Color Recipes for Authentic Tsukemono by Seiko Ogawa.

However, the type of pickles that you are likely to be served in a high class traditional inn in Japan, or even the type you can buy in vacuum sealed packs at a supermarket, are a bit more complicated to make, especially outside of Japan. Here are some examples.

Umeboshi or pickled plum

Umeboshi or pickled plums (the reddish lumps pictured above) are arguably the most famous Japanese pickles. The just-ripened fruit of the ume tree, which belongs to the prunus family of fruit trees (which includes the various kinds of Western plums, apricots, peaches and cherries), are pickled in a very time consuming and prolonged process. Here are the basic steps involved:

In the spring, ume fruit are carefully washed and de-stemmed, so as not to prick or damage the fruit.
The fruit are salted in lots of salt, then weighted down and left for about a month or more in a disinfected container. The weight is changed during this process according to how much liquid is extracted from the plums.
In June when red shiso leaves are out, the leaves are salted and then added to the salted ume. The whole thing is disinfected and weighted down again.
In July to early August, when the sun is hot, the ume are taken out and dried out in the sun. (This is the hoshi part of umeboshi, which means “dried”).
Sometimes the umeboshi are further marinated in a flavoring liquid. An important by-product of umeboshi making is the ume vinegar, the salty-sour liquid that is extracted from the ume.

Besides the time it takes to make umeboshi (a surprising number of people in Japan do make it, including my mother - it’s sort of like a yearly ritual) you can probably see the difficulties presented in trying to make it outside of Japan. First, where to get a hold of ume? (I’ve often thought about the possibility of using apricots as a substitute, but apricots ripen at the wrong time.) You’d have to get a hold of red shiso leaves too - the only way to do that that I know if is to grow them yourself from seed. And finally, you probably need to live in an area that gets as hot as much of Japan does in the summer for the umeboshi to dry out properly.

So, to make umeboshi, you’d have to start by planting your own ume trees. It’s often said that Tokyo and Atlanta have similar climates. Anyone in Georgia want to give it a go? :)

Other pickles that use ume vinegar

Ume vinegar is a pretty important ingredient in many other pickles. Shibazuke (pictured above) for instance, the bright purple pickles you can buy in vacuum packs, is a mixture of cucumber and eggplant (aubergine), picked in ume vinegar with additional red shiso leaves. I did try to make this once, but found that it really needs the small, firm Japanese or Asian eggplants and cucumbers. Red pickled ginger (benishouga 紅ショウガ）is also picked in ume vinegar - and requires young, tender ginger root. Ume vinegar is sold at supermarkets in Japan, and is becoming more available outside of Japan these days, so if you can get a hold of the base ingredients you can give them a try.

Nukazuke, pickling vegetables in fermented rice bran

Another major ingredient used for making pickles is rice bran or nuka (糠）. This of course is what is polished off rice grains to produce white rice. Rice bran pickles or nukazuke (糠漬け） are what you usually get at traditional restaurants, many of whom pride themselves on the quality of their homemade ＿nukazuke_.

To make rice bran pickles, a special moist rice bran bed called the nukedoko is made. This rice bran bed is the key - it’s salted, flavored with various things that hold lots of umami, and slightly fermented. Fresh vegetables are buried for a couple of days in this moist, living bed and allowed to lightly ferment themselves. Taking care of a nukadoko requires time and skill. It’s rather similar to taking care of a sourdough starter, except it’s much more high maintenance, even more so than a desem starter. You can’t easily go away on a long vacation if you want to keep a rice bran bed alive and happy. (And you must never, ever let any animal products near your nukadoko.)

Unlike umeboshi, most rice bran pickles are not long-keeping; like instant pickles, they must be refrigerated and eaten within a few days.

Dried vegetable pickles

Another category of pickle is the dried vegetable pickle. These pickles are probably very ancient in provenance. Freshly farmed whole vegetables are hung out in the open air to dry out, then they are salted and pickled. One of the most well known ones of this type are takuan or takuwan, bright yellow, slightly sweet pickles made from half-dried daikon radish (pictured above). (The yellow is not artificial food dye when made using traditional methods; it comes from turmeric, called ukon in old Japanese.) Nozawanazuke or takanazuke, dried greens that are pickled, are also of this type. These kinds of pickles require a lot of time to make, and really only make sense if you have the space to make them in bulk - like if you have a daikon radish farm.

I’ve thought off and on about making a rice bran bed (you can buy rice bran at Japanese grocery stores). But it won’t happen this year, since I have a lot of things to do, will likely be doing a lot of travelling and basically just won’t have the time. Maybe another year, when I’ll have enough time to grow lots of my own vegetables. In the meantime, I’m going to stick to storebought pickles and made-in-a-few-minutes instant pickles.

How to cook taro root or satoimo

maki — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:17:45 +0200

When I write about some ingredients or vegetables, I am usually quite confident that most people will like them. Lotus root for example may look exotic to western eyes, but is are quite neutral in taste. Taro root, or satoimo （里芋）in Japanese, are a different matter though, because it has a texture that divides people sharply into like and dislike: sliminess.

Japanese people in general, unlike most peoples of the western hemisphere, love foods with slimy textures. Whereas in the American South okra is battered and coated and deep-fried to minimize the slime as much as possible, in Japan the sliminess is even enhanced and celebrated in many okra dishes.

Taro root is not as aggressively slimy as okra innards, but it definitely has it. (It’s the base ingredient in the Hawaiian speciality poi.) In Japan taro root is most often boiled or stewed in liquid, which dissipates the sliminess somewhat. It may however take some getting used to.

On the other hand, taro root is high in fiber, lower in calories by weight than white potatoes, and very filling. It’s a good alternative starch.

Incidentally, the Japanese word for taro root, satoimo （里芋）means “potato (or starch root) of the homeland (sato)”.

Where to buy taro roots and what they look like

Taro roots are eaten all over East and South Asia, so you can find them at Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and South Asian groceries. (I get mine at an Indian grocery store in Zürich.)

Taro root looks rather hairy and intimidating, sort of like Hell’s Angel versions of potatoes.

(The top left one has just started sprouting. This can just be cut off, but try to get ones that aren’t sprouting.)

How to prepare taro root or satoimo (as they are prepared in Japan)

You will usually need to scrub them fairly well - a stiff vegetable brush does this job the best, or a tawashi if you’re in Japan - because little bits of dirt tend to get trapped in the hairy bits.

Once they are scrubbed, you can peel them as-is with a peeler or knife. However, some people with sensitive skin react to the slime of raw taro root and get itchy. (This also happens with yamaimo and nagaimo, as I explained briefly previously.) To avoid this, you can also try this microwave method:

Wash and dry the taro roots. Put on a plate and cover loosely with plastic wrap.
Microwave on HIGH for 4-5 minutes if the taro roots are small or about the size of golf balls, longer if they are bigger.
Peel each root while holding it in a paper towel or kitchen towel, since they’ll be hot. The root inside will firm but cooked through more or less. You can then put them into soups, stews, etc.

The itchy substance goes away once the roots are cooked.

Recipe: Satoimo (taro root) cooked in miso with tofu

This is an extremely simple dish where the taro roots are cooked in a miso sauce, with crumbled tofu. Actually I originally wanted the tofu to stay in neat squares, but it goes crumbled during cooking. It tastes good (if you like taro root’s texture) in any case.

5-6 small to medium taro roots, peeled with the microwave method
1/2 block firm tofu
1 cup dashi stock (traditional or vegan or water
2 Tbs. white miso
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. maple syrup or 1/2 Tbs. sugar

Cut the taro root into bite-size pieces if necessary - for small ones just cut in half. Put into a pan with the dashi stock, mirin and sugar or maple syrup. Crumble in the tofu.

Bring to a boil and cook down until the liquid is almost gone. Add the soy sauce. Thin out the miso with a little water or dashi until liquid rather than a paste, and add to the pan. Let simmer for a few minutes. Serve hot or cold.

Garnish with something green to perk up the beige.

Other ways to enjoy taro root

You can add taro root to stews, soups, and so on. You can also try making taro root chips. They are very nice in a Japanese style curry, instead of white potatoes.

Other slimy foods that Japanese people love

Natto
Nameko - slimy small mushrooms
Okra - even raw! Usually boiled or deep-fried though.
Nagaimo and yamaimo - root vegetables that are slimy when raw. Often eaten grated and raw, with a raw egg for more slimy goodness.
Mekabu, a type of seaweed
Moroheiya, a tropical green vegetable, touted in recent years for its health benefits.

The original Iron Chef Japan is back on the air in the US

maki — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:36:56 +0200

Fans of the original Japanese Iron Chef (ryouri no tetsujin 料理の鉄人) in the U.S. have cause for celebration, because the series is back on the air starting tonight at 11pm Eastern on the Fine Living channel. I think it’s been off the air on the Food Network for a while now. In my opinion, while the American version is fine, there’s nothing to match the sheer craziness and fun of the original.

Ryouri no tetsujin, which actually means The Iron People (Men) of Cooking, first aired on Fuji TV in Japan from 1993 to 1999. Fuji TV aired a couple of hours of Japanese television aimed at the expat community in Japan in the U.S., where Iron Chef became a bit hit. (I watched it on WNYC in New York in the early ’90s. I still remember that the first episode I ever saw - Battle Salmon!) Somehow, it caught the eye of a Food Network exec and was dubbed…and was discovered by the general English speaking audience.

The Iron Chefs, and the chefs who went against them in the Kitchen Stadium, were doing some pretty extreme cooking. It was theatrical, creative and exciting. I sometimes wonder if any of the Iron Chef craziness influenced any young chefs.

There are a few clips up on YouTube to whet your appetite.

Some of my personal Iron Chef high points and low points:

The first time a non-Japanese chef beat an Iron Chef (Ron Siegel)
The battle of the French masters vs. the Japanese Iron Chefs, in France, where the vote was split by nationality and the French managed to win because the French judges had voted in some clever way.
Battle Potato, when Katsuyo Kobayashi, one of my favorite cookbook authors, beat Iron Chef Chen resoundingly.
Another Battle Potato (I think it was New Potato) when Kobayashi’s son Kentaro, who’s also a cookbook author and TV cooking personality (and now more popular than his mom) was the challenger, and his mother couldn’t stop trying to coach him from the audience.
The way the commenters talked about the rare woman challenger - so sexist it was almost quaint.
Seeing Chef Chen, who was my second favorite Iron Chef, use a little spoonful of fois gras in something, but somehow make the whole thing disappear. (My favorite Iron Chef was the Japanese Iron Chef that Morimoto replaced, Rokusaburo Michiba. Both were also regular’s on NHK’s Today’s Cooking, a much more sedate food show.)
Bobby Flay dancing on a cutting board with his shoes on was a low light. Despite him saying later that he was made to do it, I’ve never been a fan of his since.
Chairman Kaga, one of the sexiest men on air at the time. (He’s an actor just in case, not a real eccentric rich gourmet. The ‘nephew’ on the American version is a pale, pale shadow.)

Be sure to check out the great fan site Iron Chef Fans for a lot more. Even though the site hasn’t been updated for a while, there’s still a lot there worth reading. (Besides, the last original episode aired in 2002 so there isn’t much to update.)

Allez cuisine!

Quick take: Yogurt (yoghurt) cheese with garlic and olive oil

maki — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:04:06 +0200

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has an article about how to make yogurt (or as they spell it in the UK, yoghurt) in the Guardian. I did not want to go to the trouble of making yogurt from scratch, but I had a big pot of plain yogurt that needed to be used up so I made a sort of variation on the yogurt cheese balls further down on the page.

Yogurt cheese, in case you are unfamiliar with it, is just plain yogurt that has been drained of much of its liquid. To make it, just line a sieve with some porous cloth like cheesecloth, muslin, a coffee filter or even a couple of paper towels, spoon the yogurt in, and put the sieve with a bowl underneath in the refrigerator for at least a few hours. The more you let it sit, the drier it will become.

I strained about 2 1/2 cups of yogurt mixed with 1 teaspoon of sea salt from Friday evening to Sunday morning, by which time it had become the consistency of whipped cream cheese. I put this into a bowl, grated one garlic clove over it and drizzled on some extra virgin olive oil and mixed it up. It was the perfect spread for freshly baked hot savory scones.

I’ve never been a big fan of very sweet yogurt, so this savory yogurt spread may make more breakfast appearances.

Reflections on the food prices poll results

maki — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:43:50 +0200

The food prices poll has just concluded, and the results show that 43% of the people who votes are ‘very concerned’ and 45% are ‘a little concerned’ about rising food prices. That is quite a lot indeed.

I’ve been thinking of ways in which our household food budget can go on a diet. Given that we are rather passionate about good food around here, there are compromises we are not willing to make. But there are lots we can do without feeling like we are depriving ourselves too.

Eat out less. This is an easy one really, because I feel that we can eat better food at home both taste wise and health wise. So no more eating out for eating out’s sake. We don’t want to give up going to really good restaurants, but we’ll put them in the “entertainment” column, not within the “food” column.
Stop impulse buying those tempting ‘gourmet’ treats. This is a bit more difficult for me - I find it hard to resist that jar of extra special preserves or mustard, not to mention all those delcious looking cheeses and hams and such that are on offer at speciality markets. I feel rather guilty when looking at all those barely opened jars in the fridge though.
Don’t buy prepackaged supermarket foods. This is also easy - most premade food is less than stellar.
Buy food that is as close to its original form as possible. The most food is processed, the more it costs. A box of cereal costs far more than plain oatmeal. Flavored rice mixes are way more expensive than plain rice.
Less meat and fish, more vegetarian proteins. I don’t want to compromise on the quality of the meat we get (for instance, we like to get Poulet de Bresse or at least a St. Sever quality chicken for roasting, which is about twice the price of a regular chicken), but I’m happy with eating less of it and using more vegetable proteins like beans.
Buy only what we really need. This is the most important thing - too often I buy too many vegetables or something, and some of it ends up going bad and getting thrown out.

What things can you think of doing, or are doing already, to painlessly cut down on food spending?

Wagashi are not some sort of magic Japanese diet food

maki — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:42:56 +0200

I have so many things to do that I vowed to stay away from the computers this weekend, but someone alerted me to this entry on the Health.com blog which quotes me. (Health.com is a Time Inc. property.) I just wanted to set some things straight, because a couple of the statements there are just not right.

The writer, Amy O’Connor, contacted me with some questions, based on her premise that wagashi or Japanese sweets were healthier for you because they were low fat (or at least no added fat; there is some fat content in the beans used). She wanted to know if this was a reason why Japanese people were generally thin.

What I basically said to Ms. O’Connor was this: no, I don’t think the lack of butter and cream in wagashi have anything to do with the general thinness of Japanese people. As I am quoted as saying, things like smaller portions, more movement and societal pressure are the main causes. I also said that a traditional Japanese meal does not include a dessert course.

So I was not misquoted as such. But the rest of the blog entry goes on to say some rather misleading things, which I am rather surprised by since I gave the writer plenty of information which would have, I thought, logically lead her away from her preconception that wagashi are some magical diet snack.

First and most inaccurate: “The Japanese are not fond of cream, chocolate, butter, or the fattening ingredients that comprise the typical Western dessert.” - As anyone who has spent any time in Japan knows, this is absolutely not true. Japanese people love cakes and gateaus and puddings chocolates and choux buns. Beard Papa, anyone? Pocky? Purin? Cute Sanrio characters named after sweet sticky buns? I would venture to say that Tokyo may have more French-style patisseries per capita than almost any other city except for Paris and Vienna. Those skinny Japanese women love love love Western style pastries. Those pastries may not necessarily be eaten as part of a main meal as dessert, but are eaten between meals for sure.

The blog post also goes onto recommend giving wagashi a try. Of course, why not? You may like them, you may not. (I’ve noticed that non-Asian people have very mixed reactions to Asian sweets in general.) However if anyone thinks that wagashi will aid your weight loss efforts, please think again. They are loaded with highly refined white sugar and often use white rice or wheat flour. They are in that sense about on par with those infamous low-fat cookies, Snackwells. Surely we are beyond the point of thinking that eating low fat but high sugar snacks leads to weight loss?

A point in favor of wagashi is that many are partly made with some kind of bean - though almost always hulled beans, so with a lot less fiber than say, your average baked beans. Also, most wagashi are made in tiny little portions which, because they are so sweet, you can only eat slowly, usually with a cup of green tea. Finally, they may make you feel full simply because you’re not used to the texture and taste. But all this is simply speculation. I for one could probably eat more taiyaki or ichigo daifuku than I could a dense chocolate cake in one sitting.

Comparing apples to oranges, or rather wagashi to Western pastries

Here are some calories for some typical Japanese sweets. The source is the official food nutrient database (五訂食品標準成分表) which is published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the standard reference for all dieticians and health professionals in Japan. Numbers are rounded off for simplicity.

1 daifuku (mochi (beaten white rice) dumpling filled with sweet azuki beans): 160 calories
1 piece of yohkan (a block of azuki bean paste): about 100 calories for a piece approx. 1 cm (less than half an inch) thick
1 dorayaki (two little pancakes with a mound of sweet azuki beans in the middle): 240 calories, most of which comes from refined sugar and white flour

Now here are the calories for single portion sizes of Western style sweets as they are typically sold, and eaten, in Japan:

1 individual serving of purin (caramel custard): 110 calories
1 small choux pastry filled with custard: 150 calories
1 piece strawberry ‘shortcake’ (actually a spongecake filled and frosted with whipped cream, with strawberries in the middle and on top): 350 calories

Not such a huge difference is there? Yes, those typical Japanese cake and pudding portions are quite small. The piece of strawberry shortcake for example is just about the size of the palm of my hand. A choux bun is about 3 inches in diameter.

So we come to same old boring conclusion

Anyway, why are Japanese women generally thin? I’ve addressed this subject in depth a little while ago, but to put it in a nutshell:

They eat less. Portions are much smaller.
They move more.
There’s a lot of societal pressure to remain skinny

Not very novel or cute answers I’m afraid. There is no magic pill, or little sweet.

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nutritionist or health professional. But I would challenge anyone to get a Japanese health professional to come up with the conclusion that eating wagashi in lieu of Western style sweets can help people lose weight.)

Cooking whole dried soybeans

maki — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:53:24 +0200

Until fairly recently I had a blind spot when it came to the humble soybean. I regularly consume soy products like soy milk, tofu and okara, not to mention fermented soybean products like natto and tempeh. And green soybeans or edamame are always a great snack.

But for some reason, I didn’t really get into eating the whole dried (and cooked) soybean. It’s not that they are that much harder to cook than other dried beans either.

In any case, I’ve rectified that situation and now I cook up a batch of soybeans quite regularly and store them in the freezer. Plain boiled soybeans are amazingly delicious, and just packed with nutrition. The cooking liquid is so rich that it can be used as a very nutritious stock or dashi for making soups and such.

There are a couple of points to watch out for when cooking whole soybeans, which are noted below in copious detail.

Step 1: Wash and pick over

Rinse the dried soybeans, rubbing them together gently to remove any surface powdery residue , and pick out any dark or discolored beans. These will not cook properly. If any of the hulls work themselves loose while you’re washing, pick those out too.

Step 2: Soak overnight

Soak the beans in water to cover for several hours or overnight. You may need to soak them a bit longer than other types of beans. Also, the bring to a boil then let sit for an hour method of speeding up bean cooking does’t really work well for some reason.

After soaking, you can optionally split the beans by squeezing them gently. (An alternative is to use a food mill to split the dried beans, but I don’t have such a device so if I want the beans split I do it after they are saturated with water.)

Step 3: Use a big pot

Just like soy milk foams up like crazy while it’s being cooked, soybean cooking liquid will bubble up quite enthusiastically, all over your stovetop if you don’t watch out. So the dried soybeans should not come up to more than 1/4th of the height of your cooking pot, and the cooking water should only come up to about 1/3rd of the height maximum. In other words, use a big pot, or cook less. This is particularly true if you’re using a pressure cooker - the viscous cooking liquid may even clog up the works, so be careful. (My pressure cooker can handle about 3 cups of dried beans.)

Step 4: Bring to a boil, then skim off the grey stuff

Whether you are using a pressure cooker or a regular pot, you should first bring the soybeans to a boil, then skim off the greyish stuff that will rise to the surface of the water.

Step 5a: Using a pressure cooker

After you’ve skimmed off the initial grey stuff, put a heat-safe plate that is a smaller than the circumference of the pot on top of the beans. This plate helps to keep the beans from dancing around, and also prevents any loose hulls from rising up and possibly clogging the pressure valves. Once it’s reached pressure, lower the heat and cook for 20-25 minutes. Turn off and let cool naturally until de-pressurized.

Step 5b: Using a regular pot

Heat up to a boil, then put a heat-safe plate or an otoshibuta on top of the beans. Cooking time is about 3 hours, but don’t worry, you don’t have to watch it continuously for that time. Top up with additional water from time to time if it seems to be cooking off, and skim off any grey stuff. A slow cooker would work too. The beans are done if you press one between your finger and thumb and it’s soft, not crunchy. (Or just eat one!)

Step 6: Draining and removing the hulls

Once the beans are cooked using either method, stir then let them sit a bit - the loose hulls will rise to the surface. Skim these off. Strain the beans, reserving the liquid to use as a vegan stock. (Don’t get too concerned about a few loose hulls left in. Removing those hulls is just a good idea because they tend to end up undigested and loose in your innards, which may cause you to rooty-toot-toot a bit more than you may want to and such.)

Step 7: Optional oven drying

The beans at this stage are pale and rather soft. You can use them as-is, but one thing I like to do to at least half the beans is to slow-dry them in the oven. This makes the beans firmer and meatier, and more suited to use as a meat substitute.

Just spread out the well drained and cooked beans on a baking sheet, and put into your oven at the lowest possible heated setting. On my oven that’s 50°C or 122°F. Leave the sheet of beans in there for about 2 hours, turning occasionally. They will shrink to about 20% and turn a light reddish brown. If you taste one it should be just a bit chewy but not hard.

You can use these dried soybeans coarsely ground in a food processor as a ground meat substitute in pasta sauces and such, or to make soy burgers and so on. (You can dry canned soybeans in this way too.)

Storing and freezing

I store un-dried soybeans in freezer bags with a little bit of the cooking liquid. These are used in stewed dishes, soups and such. The dried beans are stored on their own in freezer bags. The cooking liquid can be frozen too.

So there you have it. It may seem complicated, but it really isn’t once you’ve done it once. And the results are worth it especially if you are a vegan/vegetarian. And it’s wonderfully cheap too.

Now, of course you can turn these boiled soybeans into fun things like tempeh and natto. That’s for another day….

A bit of Swiss milk chocolate

maki — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:52:08 +0200

I spent the last couple of weeks surrounded by chocolate bars.

First, I sent out 53 (plus a couple…I lost count) of chocolate bars to the winner of the Menu for Hope raffle. (It was sent out so late because the recipient was away from home.) The winner had requested that the selection be made up mostly of milk chocolate bars. Now, you might think that assembling 50 + different kinds of milk chocolate would be a tough call, but not here! There are many, many more than 50 kinds of milk chocolate sold in stores here - and I’m not even including the kinds with things like nuts or fruit or whatever mixed in.

Then last week, I got the ‘bill’ from my stepfather (who is an accountant) for doing my U.S. tax return. (Yes, all U.S. citizens must file them regardless of where they live.) He wanted some Swiss chocolate - milk, of course.

Nowadays, dark chocolate is in, especially since it’s supposed to be healthy or something. I do like that intense hit of cacao now and then, but I must admit that I am a milk chocolate kind of girl. Nothing surpasses the sensation of a combination of chocolate and smooth creamm melting smoothly on the tongue.

Here in Switzerland, it’s generally believed that the chocolatiers got a bit behind on the dark chocolate craze, and have been playing catchup to the Belgians and the French. These days there are all kinds of dark chocolate varietals and such on the shelves here. But still, Switzerland does milk chocolate the best in my opinion. Sure you can get terrific handmade truffles and pralines in Paris or Bruges, and you could argue that Belgian dark chocolate is better (though I’m not sure that’s true anymore). But a plain, (relatively) inexpensive bar of milk chocolate? Swiss all the way.

Here are a few of the mostly milk chocolate bars that were sent out to the eager recipients (sorry for the iffy photos for some of them, I was in a hurry). At current exchange rates you can just about convert the francs (CHF) directly to US dollars (1 CHF = $1). Going from the least expensive on up:

M-Budget is the ‘no-label’ house brand of Migros, the leading supermarket chain in Switzerland. This full size 100g bar of chocolate is only 50 Rappen, or 50 cents! It’s not bad, quite sweet. I think the package design is quite nice too. (The cheapest not-on-sale bar of chocolate I’ve seen so far is 25 Rappen. That one is not so nice.)

Frey is another Migros house brand. This one has a Euro ‘08 (that’s soccer/football) design on it. Here’s the Frey lineup on the Migros online shop, LeShop.

This is a standard bar of milk chocolate from one of the big makers, Cailler (Nestlé), costing about 1.20 CHF. (They messed around with the packaging a couple of years ago, and had to woo the Swiss public back, but now they seem to be back on top.) A very sweet, vanilla-rich flavor.

This is a bio and free trade chocolate bar from Max Havelaar. Tastewise it’s average, but you can feel righteous eating it.

Swiss Army brand chocolate with guarana, in Survival portions (50 grams, half the size of a regular bar). Obviously aimed at the tourist trade, but nice design anyway!

Villars is a more upmarket brand, and they make terrific, creamy milk chocolate. My mother’s favorite! This is a half-size bar, but they make bigger bars too. The design is very Swiss-cliché, but we will forgive them for that.

Another Villars - milk chocolate with little bits of coffee in it! I love this one so much, it’s a good thing it’s a tad too expensive to buy every day.

Finally, this is not strictly a milk chocolate bar, but it is very creamy and very intense. It’s a house brand bar from Sprüngli, my favorite confectionery store. Made from Cru Sauvage varietal chocolate from Bolivia. The truffles are even more intense, but they go off very quickly (after a week the flavor is already rather faded), so these bars are more durable. Sprüngli online shop.

These chocolate bars are not edible. They’re actually an ad for Lindt chocolates, near the Central tram stop in Zürich.

I have often wondered what it would be like if those bars were real…

(Sidenote: For a while, I was contemplating putting up yet another blog dedicated just to Swiss chocolate. But, my waistline and my teeth told me that the necessary research would be too much for them. So I’ll just have to confine myself to the occasional chocolate outburst here.)

More chocolatey photos in my Chocolate! flickr set.
More chocolate related articles.

Finding me on Twitter

maki — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:24:08 +0200

I’ve noticed that some people have been following makiwi on Twitter. Thanks for adding me, but I don’t really use that account for public twitters (I use it mainly for Sandy reminders and such). Publicly I twitter on bentotips. If you miss my daily links and such, which I stopped posting here because of clutter, follow me there, where I tend to post them nowadays in addition to other aimless things.

And incidentally, I am also on other social media sites but I never use them. I don’t have the time to use them. How do other people find the time? So if you happen to find me on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc…just pass by, it’s an empty void.

A vegan version of nikujaga (Japanese meat and potatoes), plus how to remake Japanese recipes to make them vegan

maki — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:06:17 +0200

Nikujaga, stewed potatoes with meat, is a staple of Japanese home cooking. It’s filling and comforting, and appears quite frequently for dinner at our house. Recently though I’ve been making this vegan version more frequently, which is just as tasty as the meaty version. Thick fried tofu (atsuage) is the protein replacement, but it’s not just there for it’s nutritional benefits - I love the texture in a lot of dishes.

The recipe, plus some ideas on how to reform Japanese non-vegan recipes to make them vegan, after the jump.

Recipe: Potatoes stewed with fried tofu and green beans

Makes 4 servings as part of a Japanese meal

4 medium firm boiling type potatoes (not baking potatoes)
1 cup frozen green beans, or the equivalent amount of fresh green beans
1/2 small onion
1 to 2 squares of thick fried tofu (atsuage)
2 Tbs. sake
3 Tbs. soy sauce
2 Tbs. dark (grade B) maple syrup
1 Tbs. sesame oil

Peel and cut up the potatoes into small pieces. If using fresh green beans, cut off the tops and cut into pieces. Slice the onion.

Cover the fried tofu in boiling water, and drain. This gets rid of much of the surface oil.

Heat up a heavy-bottomed pan with the sesame oil. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the potato and tofu pieces, and sauté intil the oil coats the pieces well. Add the green beans and toss around some more.

Add just enough water to cover. Add the sake, soy sauce and maple syrup. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to about medium-low, put on a lid and let simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 10-15 minutes. To concentrate the flavors even more, take the lid off and simmer for an additional 10-15 minutes until the liquid is almost evaporated - this step is optional.

Serve hot or cold. The flavors mellow if you let it rest, which makes it very good for bento.

Notes

If you want bright green green beans, just add them in the last few minutes of cooking. I just add it with everything else because they taste better that way. (Sort of like the way green beans are cooked until they are almost falling apart in the South.)

This is even better if you use new potatoes.

Making non-vegan Japanese recipes vegan

If you compare this recipe to the classic nikujaga, the first thing you may notice is that there’s no meat. There is also no dashi stock used. Traditional dashi stock, which forms the basis of the majority of savory Japanese cooking, is not vegan, since one of the key ingredients is dried bonito (fish) flakes or niboshi (dried little sardines). Using a vegan dashi which uses just kombu seaweed and/or dried shiitake is an option. But it’s also possible in some cases to omit the dashi entirely, as in this recipe.

When you omit meat and dashi (or any soup stock), what you lose is a lot of umami. To make up for this, add ingredients that are inherently rich in umami or other flavoring ingredients. In the recipe above for example, the onion, sake, sesame oil, soy sauce and maple syrup add plenty of flavor to the dish - and without dashi the flavor of the potatoes comes through better too.

And about that maple syrup: Since Japanese recipes often call for sugar, using a flavorful sweetener instead of plain white sugar is a way to add some extra oomph. Raw cane sugar, brown sugar, palm sugar, maple syrup and honey are some options. Dark maple syrup goes very well with Japanese flavors.

(Incidentally, if you’re a North American visiting friends elsewhere, maple syrup makes a great gift because it’s really expensive over the pond!)