Nakajima Suisan Grilled Fish

This is my favorite food at Takashimaya. Yes, it takes bloody long to wait, but I love to eat grilled fish, especially gindara (it's cod, for crying out loud, besides I am sick of salmon). I would go there to eat whenever I am in the area for buying art supplies at Art Friends or books at Kinokuniya. Read my book, swing my feet (I love to sit at the booth), chew away and appreciate how the salt bring out the sweetness of the meat *drool*. It is Forever Alone at its best.

It helps that I live somewhat near the place so it is easy for me to either bus or train down to the place .

Tempura Lunch

I had frozen scallops and was feeling a bit adventurous. So I decided to make tempura. Note to self, should find some way to dehydrate the mushrooms first, before frying them. Because the water in the mushrooms kept coming out as I was frying, which made for some angry oil popping at me.

I also ran out of tempura flour. So I searched online for the recipe. It was pretty bad because the batter came out pretty thick. Instead I had to add some water to it (a bit too much water, so I am modifying down the water in this recipe).

Nibblezware Tempura batter Substitute

1/4 cup wheat flour

1/4 cup corn flour

1 large egg

50g cold water

Try not to mix the batter too well, and fry quickly.

Japanese cold salad for combating hot weather

Two weeks ago, it was incredibly hot in Singapore (yes, the fact that it is raining everyday now is such a 180 degree irony). Plants were visibly withering in the heat and so was I. The thought of cooking in the hot kitchen made me feel ill, but B1 is a man who is obsessed with home-cooked food so he emotionally blackmailed me into making dinner.

We compromised that I would make a salad, because it was simply too hot. I think even he couldn't harbor the thought of eating hot food in this heat. So I made Japanese cold noodle salad. I once made it at home, and even my fastidious Vater liked it.

sigh. I think I went overboard while using the microwave's thaw function

The last time I made it, the primary ingredients were vinegar and mirin. This time I dumped in natto as well. It added an interesting texture to the dish, I thought, as did the bonito flakes.

 For veggies, I used letuce, cherry tomatoes, olives, corn, endamame. I boiled some spaghetti till al dente, then dumped in the veggie, fried egg bits, and bonito flakes, before tossing the entire mixture with mirin, natto, vinegar and a bit of sesame seed oil. I chilled the salad before eating. It cooled down my inner fire quite a bit *pleased*.

Oyako don

This was a lunch I was making for myself last Sunday when B1 abandoned me at the apartment over the weekend.

But he showed up, and we ended up sharing this =D. He loved this dish, which is a surprise. Then again it contained mirin. Who doesn't love sweet wine!!!

Deeper Shades of Purple - Purple carrots anyone?

I came across the purple carrots at the supermarket. I couldn't resist buying them. It's strange really, I grew up eating carrots because my mother always puts it in her cooking. She always said (nowadays it's Vater who cooks) "carrots are good for your eyes. Look, the bunny rabbit does not wear glasses." What fucking bull, which animal wears glasses, other than Man?

That said, now I feel a strange sense that all is right with the world when I open the fridge and see carrots inside. I cooked one of the carrots in a niku jaga (though I cheated and used pork slices instead of beef, we are poor people after all). It made everything purplish grey. But trust me, Mr Purple Carrot tastes as good as his orange brother =D.

Kamameshi

I am really into natural flavors. I hate MSG, because it makes my tongue swell.

I made this with bonito flakes, julienned chicken thigh and endamame. Just throw everything in the same pot until cooked.

Cold Soba Day

It is just too bothersome to cook sometimes when the weather is too hot. On these kind of days, I like to cook Japanese food, e.g. soba. It is cold and fun to eat and you end up feeling refreshed after the meal. Win Win =D

We had green tea soba with miso soup, salad with perilla dressing (some cheapo dressing I got from Daiso, but I cannot figure out what is perilla other than it tastes very green =D) and shishamo which I wasted a lot of elecrticity trying to grill them in my microwave before finally giving up and frying them to a nice brown in my non-stick pan.

Japanese Day - Grilled Fish

There is a place I like to frequent at Takashimaya, where they grill a slice of fish on the spot upon order, which can be a pain to wait for, if you are in a hurry.

Still, it makes for a nice treat. So while we were at Isetan supermarket, I decided to try grilling fish as well with my new microwave... I was thinking that maybe one slice of fish was not filling enough and should I get the weird looking kurumi fish (which B1 and I might not like) or the safe but boring mackerel?

So I bought both. What the hell is kurumi anyway? Googling it reveals that it is an anime character or a song by Mr Children...

I also bought B1's perennial favorite, daikon radish. I know he likes them in big chunks but I wanted to copy the restaurant in cutting them very thin. So I cut 4 equally sized cylinders and shredded the rest into miso soup. I later  poured out almost all the soup into our bowls, and kept only a bit for braising the daikon cylinders.

The kurumi was marinated in teriyaki sauce so it should not be a no-brainer to cook while I couldn't figure out whether to salt the mackerel. I thought that the fish was likely salted already (it was) so I left them alone.

After grilling for 20min, the mackerel was done... I couldn't figure out whether the kurumi was so I left them in the oven while I ran out to fix my Tante's pc... next thing I knew the bloody fish was abit burnt, due to the sugar in the teriyaki sauce carbonizing.

Nonetheless still edible with my favorite yellow daikon pickles, yum yum =D.

Okinawan dinner?

We were running low on natto so we did a grocery run at Meidi-ya. The cashier suggested that I become their member. The Japanese must be crazy, I would have to pay S$2 for a supposedly life-time membership and then accumulate points that must be used up every half a year. And... for every S$1 I spend, I get 1 point, and I would have to spend S$502 in 6 months to get a S$5 voucher....

There isn't much natto and half-price sashimi that I can buy for S$5.

So anyway we walked around Liang Court looking for a half decent eatery to settle our hunger. In the end we went back to the Okinawan diner. I forever associate Okinawa with pork and papayas. Anyway the joke was on me because I already had okawa in the afternoon, and my dinner set also came with okawa (think: Sekihan, the glutinous rice served with red beans to celebrate events, e.g. a girl having her first menses *gross... think about everyone celebrating your first tampon*)

The noodles was interesting. Reminded me of my usual Chinese egg noodles.

B1 had the ginger pork. Each set came with pudding-like tofu *I love* served with a thick soy sauce, minced ginger and spring onions. There were also two interesting sides of miso buta and radish (preserved with bonito and seaweed?).