Cooking rice balls so called onigiri :)

Today I'd like to introduce how to cook 'rice ball', so called "onigiri" or "omusubi" in Japan. Let's start cooking, shall we? :)

 Japan has some unique ingredients though, you could use what you can get in your place.  Baked salmon, vegetables such as cucumber, whatever :D At least you need rice, but that's it.

 First, preparing rice. Basically rice balls are made for eating outside like a picnic! (I like picnic a lot by the way ;)) Naturally, we have to make it cool. Use a fan, or just leave the rice sometime while you're cutting or cooking some toppings on it, it's also good for cooling the rice.

 This time I put sesame and dried seaweeds which is sliced :D

And some flavor as well!

 I prepared another basin to make the rice half potion, I mean, make rice half and half. Why? Because I wanted to enjoy two kinds of flavors of rice balls ;)

 In Japan, we use rice called "Japonica rice", which is rather sticky. We cook it with our hands. In order not to stick rice on my hands, I dipped them in water a moment, then start triangulate rices. 'Why the triangle shape?' You would think. Well... I don't know :P There are many other shapes like rounded, box-shaped and so forth. It all depends on you ;)

Tip: If you have a cling wrap for foods, it's way easier making rice balls by using it :D

 Use your two hands and try to make it triangle shape.

I added a Japanese apricot that is pickled, yes, a common topping for rice ball.

 It has a seed in it, you know. I always take it off so that I don't chew it during eating the rice ball. When we buy rice balls with Japanese apricot at stores, it all depends on sellers whether they remain a seed or not. And you can't tell it until you eat. So please careful when you eat rice balls which include it.
 When you eat it which I made? It never contains seed, so no worry! ;)

I made four of them. Look, they are different sizes, something are not even triangle shapes, yes, my mistake, haha.

 This is it, dried laver seaweed, we call it "Nori" by the way. Let's wrap rice balls with it :)

 Before explaining anything, forgive me for my left wrist :( I should have hidden it... :(

 Laying down seaweed thing and put the rice ball on it. Then,

 Wrap,

 Wrap,

 Wrapping!

 Here it is :)

 Rice ball is really easy to cook. Actually you don't even need seaweed things like I just said above. Only rice, that's it and I also like plain one! I hope you will cook, eat and like it ;)

Nagoyaaaaaaaaa!!!!

 Tourist places? Famous restaurants? I'm sick of them all! I just want to live a life with people and dog that care for me :) :)

 Next time! I WILL introduce some Japanese thing, not personal thing, haha.
(I wrote it too much, yes I know!)

Difficult days.

Damascus, Syria

28th August 2010, just 3 years ago

Taken by me

Praying

 Wow, I suspended my blog such a long time! Well, I'm back in my hometown Nagoya now, sometimes taking a short walk, sometimes going to a restaurant, and sometimes seeing my friend. It's my holiday, so let me do whatever I want :)

To you :)

 :)

A short stay in Toyama.

 After informed of my grandmother's  hospitalized, I quickly took trains to go to Toyama, where she was.

 Summer in Toyama is fun, although it became more and more humidity summers these past years. I rather like winters in Toyama, filled with snow, I could feel I finally came back.

It was the weekend of a festival in the center of Toyama city. Crowded people and fireworks, I'm terrible with noisy place, however, I liked it :)

On the way back to my grandmother's home, I found this train nearby. Wow, decorated with full of cartoons.

Spending nights in a traditional room, and then....

 The same restaurants, with the same people, and my grandmother was fine ;)

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 Her house was built about 40 years ago, that time they still had many traditional houses here and there. Hers is one of them. opening a small door....

 It has a tiny garden by her own room. When I was young, anytime I was there, regardless of seasons I visited, I liked spending times in her room. I could see the beautiful space once I opened her room. She is a good poet as well, she made some poems about me, I still remember.

 We don't have such kind of purely traditional rooms anymore. Living in a small apartment in Tokyo, I really want to move there!
 'I wish you could be my home, keep my house after I died.' She said to me in the hospital.
 'I'll always come back, like this time.' I smiled.

:)

Eating Pufferfish, or fugu in Japan.

 Pufferfish are a kind of fish which have poison. When we eat it without any careful, you might get poison and could be dead. In Japan, we can eat it particular restaurants and stuff :) Since I went to a restaurant for pufferfish and asked many things from them, I would like to introduce a bit.

 This is it, there was a big aquarium in front of the restaurants, filled with them. Let's eat it, shall we? :D

They served a lot of kinds of meals made of pufferfish, some are unique ways for it.

 This jelly things are called "Ni-kogori". It made of soup from pufferfish and so forth, then makes it solid. What is the orange thing near side? you might think. It's grated radish and and chili pepper for seasoning :)

Wow, looks like a variety of styles isn't it?! Balled shape colored light brown is fried one. Sure, it contains pufferfish as well as other ingredients ;)

 During eating, I asked something about pufferfish.

 'Firstly', they said to me, 'There are two licenses to cook it'. A license for cooking, plus the special license for only cooking pufferfish. I've already heard about it somewhere for a long time ago, so I asked the detail. 

 'We need the license for cooking pufferfish, but the license is not one, there are many, depending on regions and prefectures you cook.'

 'Huh?!' I amazed with some confusion.

 'It means, even if you have the license for cooking pufferfish here in Tokyo, that doesn't mean you can cook it other places like Osaka.' 

 'Why not?'

 'Because we have many kinds of pufferfish in Japan. Some can eat when we only get rid of particular parts with poison, such as entrails. But some types can't even tell where we can eat. Those types can't be eaten at all for us.'

 Even now, people dies from eating it, cooked by themselves (It's illegal to cook it without the special license by the way) or chefs for it. Eating pufferfish cooked by special chefs doesn't promise you can taste it safely. I personally like pufferfish because of its bland tasting, but hardly eat it.

 I always eat something new for me. Back in 2005, when I was in Cambodia, I had eaten a big spider filled with hair on its surface. Eating its leg one by one, then finally finished with taking the body. Also, I found a brain of sheep in Syria a year later. It came with salad, seemingly it was a main course. Raw or boiled a bit, I didn't know, however, what I did know was the fact that it really looks like the brain we imagine. Frown lines on it, I could see right and left part. It terrifies me at that time. Truth be told, I didn't want to eat it. 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do!!'  I just thought and started to eat.

 

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 I know many Japanese foods are disgusting yet yummy. Not eating something by looking at it is a way. But try to eat it with ignoring its shape and prejudice can be interesting, at least sometimes, I think :)

Sushi recipes witout raw fish ;)

 Sushi is nice, I always think so. And I want to make anything what I regard it as nice. So I made it a few days ago ;) Basically, sushi consists of raw fish and rice. Rice? Probably it's not that difficult to get. However, what about raw fish? Is it easy? These days you can get tasty raw fish anywhere by importing with airplanes and ships. But.... what if you can't get it neither? Then cook what you can get :) I have to admit that some people in my country think sushi should be made of rice and raw fish, I personally don't think so though.

 I bought all ingredients a day before this event. But precooking was way harder and time-consuming than I had thought at first. Making three or four kinds of sauces, chopping vegetables, boiling and so on. I started to do it  around 10:00 and not finished yet at 15:30, when my friend came in my home to cook together. I read some recipes in books, then here it is :)

You want to know what kind of sushi I cooked, don't you? :D Well, let's take a look one by one.

 1 Fried shrimp, sliced cabbages with tartar sauce
 2 Sliced roast beef and avocado, with grated horseradish
 3 Sardines in oil, sliced onions and some kind of alfalfa
 4 Raw ham and Welsh onions
 5 Smoked salmon, scrambled eggs with Tuna from can, and sliced cucumbers
 6 Tasted mushrooms and Welsh onions (again!).
 7 Fish minced and steamed which is with mayonnaise, and salty cucumbers (again!)

 We were all amateurs and we didn't even know how to make rice look well shape. Probably I would have asked him (It links an older post of this blog) :)

 Because I rather picked foods originally from Western such as Sardines in oil (it was from Portugal, I learned later), roast beef (We call it the same name as the imported word by the way ;)), raw ham and so forth. There are many ingredients that I hadn't heard of.
 'What is horseradish?! I can't even imagine what it's like! Salty? Spicy? Big shape? Expensive? I don't know anything about it!'
 Cooking is always fan. What makes it so enjoyable for me is I can find something completely new. 'Roast beef and rice seasoned with vinegar???? No way! I strongly suggest we should eat separately!' That person (It was me :P) admired it immediately after tasting one portion of them. I like to create fun. I'll keep on making something new ;)