Last Wednesday we had two very friendly expats from Poland and Malaysia participate in our cooking program. Right now most of the Nagomi Kitchen program participants are travelers visiting Japan so not only was it great to see that we are attracting a wider audience but it was fantastic for personal reasons since they reminded me of when I first started living in Japan.

When I first started living in Japan, although I know I had an upper hand compared to others since my cultural upbringing was Japanese, I still had a lot to learn to navigate through the supermarkets in Japan. Even simple tasks like choosing the right miso was very difficult at first. Where I grew up in the States, there were only a couple of brands to choose from so seeing all the options of white, red, and mixed miso was quite overwhelming. Watching lots of cooking shows, searching the Internet, flipping through food magazines, and attending classes that taught me the basics of dashi soup stock, soy sauce, sake, Japanese vegetables and many other topics were what helped me in the kitchen.

When one of our cooking program participants asked about all the basic mushrooms that are sold in Japanese supermarkets and how it was difficult to figure out which one was a shitake mushroom, I could very much understand her struggle. Since I ate shitake, enoki, and nameko mushrooms when I was growing up in Texas, I could at least distinguish those three at the supermarket. But the others like the eringi king trumpet mushroom, the maitake Hen-of-the-Woods mushroom, the buna shimeji brown beech mushroom, and the bunapi shimeji white beech mushrooms, I learned about while living in Japan.

I also noticed that the Nagomi Kitchen cooking program helps expats to learn the Japanese words and packaging of familiar ingredients like sesame oil or potato starch. A lot of them struggle trying to find the ingredients they need to make food from back home so by the end of the lesson they know what to look for and also know how to use those same ingredients to make at least one or two Japanese dishes.

So my hope for the Nagomi Kitchen program is to not only be a program for those visiting Japan to get exposed to Japanese food, but to support new expats in Japan so they can get a head start and become more comfortable in their new kitchen.

We’ve actually had a few people in the past participate in our program because it was given to them as a gift from friends or family so maybe the Nagomi Kitchen cooking lesson might be a good gift idea to welcome fellow expats to their new life in Japan?

Alisa Sanada, (@asanada) co-organizer for Nagomi Kitchen, is a former Texan currently residing in Kawasaki. She went from craving fresh jalapenos while working 7 years in the web industry in Tokyo and Osaka to craving fresh tofu while traveling across the globe for a year in 2011 as a full time nomad. Alisa joined Nagomi Kitchen wanting to bring together her passions, the web, travel, and food.

This Thursday we had a lovely guest from the US and his father participate in our Basic Japanese Cooking lesson. They were such fun and enthusiastic guests that I, myself, very much enjoyed my time with them.

It was fantastic seeing families like them really trying to dig deep into Japanese culture during their short stay in Japan. Especially the father, who although it was his first time in Asia, he really made an effort to learn Japanese by listening to language CDs. Honestly I’m never usually that easily impressed by people being able to speak Japanese but this time it was special since every now and then he would blurt out a Japanese word or phrase he learned and it wasn’t just once or twice! Subarashii! Very good. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I made a Japanese style soup with bacon for dinner. I suppose if I still were in the States I might have made the soup with potatoes, cheese, leeks, or beans but this time since I am in Japan using Japanese bacon, the soup had a light chicken broth base with mizuna, enoki mushrooms, and green onions.

I suppose everyone has their opinion of Japanese bacon depending on where they come from. Coming from the States you might be surprised at how it tastes more like ham. But as long as you know how to cook with it, I’m hoping you will crave more of these new set of flavors rather than just longing for whatever is back home.

Using bacon with ingredients like asparagus, spinach, potatoes, and cheese is quite common in Japan but I love it when I find bacon recipes that really have an obvious Japanese twist to it like bacon and nanohana blossoms pasta. You can either make a simple version with just basic flavors like olive oil, garlic, red pepper, and of course salt and pepper, but a cream sauce would work well too. Add any sort of Japanese mushroom you find at the supermarket that day that is cheap like maitake mushrooms and voila!

I honestly cannot imagine my Japanese mother making this dish at home since it definitely is the younger generation that has incorporated this new ingredient into their diet for better or for worse. However, it is not uncommon for quick and easy East meets West types of dishes like these to appear in a modern Japanese home cooked meal. So although it is definitely good to learn about purely Japanese ingredients, sometimes it is fun to learn how these perhaps more familiar ingredients are used in Japanese home cooked meals.

Make sure to ask us about seasonal vegetables like nanohana during our Nagomi Kitchen cooking lessons because spring is coming to Japan and it’s definitely an exciting time for food here!

Alisa Sanada, (@asanada) co-organizer for Nagomi Kitchen, is a former Texan currently residing in Kawasaki. She went from craving fresh jalapenos while working 7 years in the web industry in Tokyo and Osaka to craving fresh tofu while traveling across the globe for a year in 2011 as a full time nomad. Alisa joined Nagomi Kitchen wanting to bring together her passions, the web, travel, and food.

Yesterday I went to a friends house and was surprised that she served miso soup with fresh ginger. Being a fan of all things ginger, I searched around on the internet both in Japanese and English for similar recipes. Although it wasn’t one of the most popular ingredients when it comes to miso soup, there seemed to be quite a few fans out there that liked it most during the wintertime to warm up. Seemed like a logical combination but I guess it just never crossed my mind to try it out.

It’s little discoveries like these that make miso soup exciting. A soup that seems so simple and straight forward has so much potential.

Miso soup is a staple menu in Japanese restaurant’s worldwide but I always feel that there is something lacking in them. Yes there are restaurants that get it right of course, but often times it just tastes like hot water with just miso and no depth. But I think what makes them less exciting is that there is not much variety when it comes to the actual ingredients inside the miso soup. It’s always tiny pieces of tofu, wakame seaweed, and maybe some green onions.

But don’t get me wrong, having tofu and wakame is not the problem. It’s the most basic yet most popular ingredient for miso soup. It’s just that even if you are just making this basic miso soup, I feel like not many people realize there is still a lot of room for creativity. You can just start from using different types of tofu. Of course you can choose between the basic hard or soft tofu but different brands have different flavors, especially fresh tofu, so it’s best to try all of them out. You can also cut the tofu into small pieces or large depending on what you put in with the tofu. There is also of course the option of using different dashi soup stock.

I suppose its best to make your own dashi from scratch but for everyday miso soup I use an ago flying fish dashi packet that looks like a tea bag because I personally like the more nuanced flavors that come from this dashi than when I use the popular Ajinomoto Hondashi. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a pretty good miso soup with Hondashi so I don’t want people to knock it since it is the most accessible instant dashi out there. I think the key is to make sure that the flavors from your ingredients become part of the broth, adding more depth. That’s where the ingredients play a big role in making the flavor in your miso soup unique.

Besides tofu, I like potatoes in my miso soup with wakame but my husband is more of a daikon radish or taro fan which makes the soup base sweeter. Onions and cabbage are also options that make the soup base sweeter. An alternative to normal tofu would be fried tofu which is less oily than it sounds so it is one of my favorites. There are also all sorts of mushrooms in Japan so whichever one is the cheapest on that day usually ends up in our miso soups.

The tonjiru pork base miso soup that is part of the Nagomi Kitchen Japanese basic cooking class menu, although the dish has it’s own name, it really is a variation of miso soup. Since tonjiru has a lot of ingredients in it, we’re hoping it will help people to taste how all these ingredients blend with the miso, to get a sense of the potential miso soup has beyond your normal tofu, wakame, and green onion combination.

Even after you’ve done making the miso soup, there is also the option of putting a dash of shichimi chilli pepper just before you eat if you’re a fan of spice like me. So as you can tell, the combinations are endless so next time you are craving some miso soup, try these options out to break away from your normal miso soup cycle. Or if you are planning on joining us at Nagomi Kitchen, feel free to ask us questions because that’s what we’re here for!

Alisa Sanada, (@asanada) co-organizer for Nagomi Kitchen, is a former Texan currently residing in Kawasaki. She went from craving fresh jalapenos while working 7 years in the web industry in Tokyo and Osaka to craving fresh tofu while traveling across the globe for a year in 2011 as a full time nomad. Alisa joined Nagomi Kitchen wanting to bring together her passions, the web, travel, and food.

Happy new year!

In Japan people eat traditional meal on new year days.
This meal called as Osechi and it’s variety kind of dishes and serves in a bento-box style plate.

People eat this Osechi with family and friends to celebrate new year.
I cooked Osechi for this year! We can also buy Osechi at department store, supermarket or even via internet in these days
but I tried to cook it with my sister on 31st Dec.

Datemaki Tamago 伊達巻きたまご – Rolled up sweet omlet

I love this sweet omlet very much! Originally my grand mother bought us a special Datemaki every year so my favorite taste of Datemaki is not a homemade but I wanted to try to cook by myself.

Kuromame 黒豆　- Sweet black beans

Cooking this dish takes a long time but we use pressure pot for this time so could save the time lot 😉

Steamed shrimp えびの出汁煮

All menu for Osechi has meaning and shrimp meaning “live a long time” because hip of shrimp stoop such as old man.

Kurikinton 栗きんとん -Sweet potato with chestnut

Kurikinton is my favorite Osechi menu as well. My mother made it every year when I was child 🙂 This is the sweet potato colored with brilliant yellow and put in some chestnut.

Typically this Osechi cooked a lot and have eaten for some days but we didn’t cook a lot for this time so it have been finished after few hours from 12:00 on Jan. 1st 😉

PS.
Nagomi Kitchen schedule the hands on style cooking classes for Japanese home cooking twice a month from this month to April, please check the date and join us if you are interested in Japanese food, cooking with original ingredients or condiments 🙂

Megumi Kusunoki, (@nagomistation) currently a cooking instructor in Tokyo started Nagomi Kitchen in hopes for people around the world to learn more about real Japanese food. Combining her passion for tourism as a former scuba diving instructor, bus tour guide, and marketing and sales manager for an online guide for tourists coming to Japan, and food, Nagomi Kitchen was born out of a labor of love. She hopes that through Nagomi Kitchen more people will become more familiar with Japanese food and ingredients and be able to incorporate Japanese home cooking into their daily meal.

We made original Pikachu with Elizabeth who come from USA and Ai who come from Japan on last Wednesday 🙂

First of all, started to make Tofu meatballs with teriyaki sauce.The teriyaki sauce made by same amount of Soy sauce, sugar, Sake and Mirin which the sweet cooking sake. It’s easy to remember isn’t it? 🙂

They fried meatballs with big smile!

From this time we prepared apron for each participants. The color is beige and black and the Japanese taste pattern on the pockets.So you don’t have to bring anything when join our cooking program!

Second step was making Pikachu, it’s a main event of the program :)I have a sample Pikachu but participants can make it as absolutely original Pikachu face with Nori seaweed.

Elizabeth made a eyebrow of Picachu, it’s a very manlike 😉 Nice!

She said she would like to join again when her friend come to Tokyo or another cooking program offered.

I updated the comments from participants who joined our cooking program, please check it 🙂

Megumi Kusunoki, (@nagomistation) currently a cooking instructor in Tokyo started Nagomi Kitchen in hopes for people around the world to learn more about real Japanese food. Combining her passion for tourism as a former scuba diving instructor, bus tour guide, and marketing and sales manager for an online guide for tourists coming to Japan, and food, Nagomi Kitchen was born out of a labor of love. She hopes that through Nagomi Kitchen more people will become more familiar with Japanese food and ingredients and be able to incorporate Japanese home cooking into their daily meal.