Yellowtail fish (buri)

I love yellowtail - it is so flavorful that you don't need to add much seasoning. It is also very easy to cook. In these pictures I am serving it with a Japanese lime/lemon (sudachi) or topped with dried yuzu citron skin.

If you can, please try to buy wild yellowtail, not farmed fish.

Here are two different ways to cook it. The whiter color one is done under the grill, and the golden one in a pan.

GRILL:
1. Tear a piece of foil to fit on top of the net in your grill.
2. Wipe some olive oil on the foil, so your fish doesn't stick.
3. Put on one fillet for each person.
4. Grill on the first side for about 5 minutes, on a medium heat.
5. Turn over the fish and grill for 3 minutes.
6. Be very careful the flame is not too high on the gas, because buri is an oily fish and will burn.

PAN:
1. Heat a non-stick pan and add a little olive oil.
2. Put in the fillets and push them about a little at first, so they don't stick.
3. Cook on the first side until golden, (3 minutes).
4. Turn and cook the other side until golden.


Of course you can cook most fish fillets in the same way. Yellowtail is good because it is flat and doesn't fall apart. Sometimes I cook it and put it in my lunch box, and it is okay at room temperature.

Free range eggs

What kind of eggs do you eat? For the past five years or more, I've only bought free range eggs. 

These eggs taste wonderful. I get them from the small farmer's shop near my house. From memory, I think they are 210yen for six. They taste so good that I can't eat any other eggs nowadays. Anyway, I think keeping chickens in tiny cages is horrible and cruel, so I refuse to eat regular eggs. I also won't buy regular chicken meat.

Please think about where your food comes from and how it is raised. If everyone was a little more thoughtful, we'd all be much healthier and the world would be a much nicer place. Industrial farming is horrible for the animals and will end up killing YOU slowly. 

The picture of the chickens is from another place that sells eggs. Those ones are also nice but more expensive and the shop is a little far. 

Brussel Sprouts

Do you like brussel sprouts? I really hated them when I was a child, but now I know that was for 2 reasons:
1. They were not fresh, and
2. my mother overcooked them :(

So how do I cook them? It is really easy. The easiest way is to wash them, drain them and cover them with damp paper towel (kitchen towel) and cook them for a few minutes in the microwave oven. This is also a good method for cooking broccoli. It keeps all the vitamins and doesn't make them bitter. Another way is below:

1. Wash the sprouts. Don't drain or dry them.
2. Put them in a non-stick pan. ***
3. Put a lid on the pan. This will help them steam.
4. Steam them for about 3 minutes, rolling them around a few times by shaking the pan. Don't open the lid or the heat and steam will escape. Most of the water will be gone.
5. Take off the lid and cook for another minute until all the water is gone.
6. While you are cooking them, chop one clove of garlic.
7. Put about 1 teaspoon of virgin olive oil in the pan with the sprouts.** Shake them around.
8. Add the garlic. Cook for about 1 minute until the garlic is golden.* Garlic will burn easily so be careful.
9. Finished!

*** I'm using my new, non-toxic Cuisinart Pan.
** You can use 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil plus 1/2 teaspoon of butter. This will give a richer taste.
* The total cooking time from start to finish is 5 minutes. Please don't cook them more.

If you think this dish is too "green" or if you want a stronger taste, add chopped bacon to the pan and don't use any oil or butter.

Not a carrot ...

I try to buy new and unusual vegetables from the farmer's shop near my house. Mostly it is okay because I read what they are, but sometimes I just grab something without checking the label.

I bought this nice vegetable thinking it was a kind of red carrot, which was in season, but when I cut it, I found out it was a long radish! Inside was pure white and it tasted like a normal radish. Oops!

Chicken herb roll

Sometimes I want to make something a little more elegant, but still simple. For Christmas, I decided to make rolled chicken. The inspiration came from when I was a teenager in Australia - at that time, frozen boneless turkey rolls were sold for Christmas. It is a pity I can't buy turkey fillets in Japan, but chicken is great!

For something more gorgeous, get some expensive brand name chicken. This time I cut costs by using some "a little expensive" meat plus some "very expensive" meat. In this case, the fillets were "jidori" and the sasami fillets were "red meat jidori". I forget the price but the red meat jidori was not something I can buy every week :)

I try not to cook in the oven so much because it takes time and electricity is expensive. If you make this dish, try to cook other oven foods such as roast vegetables and a baked pudding after that.


Preheat the oven to 210 degrees.
1. Put a flat chicken fillet onto a cutting board, skin side down.
2. Put a 5mm slice of butter in a small dish and melt it in the microwave.
3. Add some chopped herbs into the butter - chives, thyme, rosemary, sage.
4. Spread the herb butter over the meat side of the fillet.
5. Put two sasami chicken fillets in the middle of the big fillet.
(Make sure you put the sasami with two different ends together - one thick end and one thin end so it is one even log.)
6. Wrap the big fillet around the sasami and tie up with meat string in 4 places.
7. Top with some more herbs and black pepper.
8. Bake on a tray in the oven for 40 minutes.

These rolls are best hot because the skin is crunchy. The are also nice cold in a lunch box or as picnic or party food.

Ginger roasted pork

 I like to watch some cooking shows on the Internet, but I rarely take the time and trouble to make anything in real life. Just before Christmas I saw Nigella making some ginger baked ham. Well, we can't buy a leg of cured ham to cook here in Japan so I just used pork and changed things around a little.

This dish was another rule breaker and honestly, even though the taste was great, I would change it to something easier next time.



1. Buy a big block of pork. I used the kind of pork that is used for "tonkatsu" steaks and asked the butcher for a block, not steaks.
2. Put the pork in a big pot and cover it with ginger ale! (Yes, ginger ale.)
3. Boil it for one hour.
4. Drain the pork, and preheat the oven to 220 degrees.
5. Mix about 150g of ginger jam with 50g of brown sugar, 1 tablespoon whole grain mustard, and 1 teaspoon of whole cloves.
6. Put the pork in a baking dish and cover with the jam mixture.
7. Roast for about 30 minutes until the jam is golden and the meat is firm.
8. Remove from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes.

1. This roast meat is nice cold, so buy a big block.
2. This is not healthy! Next time I will use water and dry ginger powder, plus a little honey.
3. She boiled hers for 4 and a half hours!!!
5. I got the ginger jam from Kaldi Coffee. Maybe you could use fresh chopped ginger and honey? She used powdered mustard but I didn't have any. She also used powdered cloves, which would be better.

This roast meat was really nice but not ham :)  All that sugar is bad, but for Xmas it was something special.
If you want to check Nigella's actual recipe, please search for "ginger glazed ham".

A new fry pan/skillet

Recently I bought a new fry pan. I know that is not very exciting, but a good fry pan is important for cooking well without too much oil. And less oil is healthy, right? But I have to tell you something important before you get too interested ... I IMPORTED the fry pan from the USA! Crazy? Maybe, but here are my reasons:

I've been looking for a good fry pan for YEARS! About 7 years to be precise. I want something that is easy to cook with, so I tried many kinds of non-stick pans. Even the expensive ones were not so good after just 1 year or so. The non-stick coating slowly wears off. The second to last pan I bought was an expensive one from America that I bought from a local kitchenware shop. It was expensive and the box said the coating would last for many years. Well, it lasted for 1 :(  In the end it was no different to the next pan, a cheap one from a local home-center store.

The other reason I am worried about pans is that actually I don't want to use Teflon coated ones. There is some research that says the coating is toxic and very bad for our health. I don't know if that is true or not, but I don't want to take any risks. Anyway, if the coating comes off little by little, where does it go? I surely don't want to eat it!

So then I bought a stainless steel pan like chefs use in a restaurant. It is nice if you cook food on a high heat with much oil, but honestly it is difficult to use in daily life. If you are not careful, the food sticks very quickly :(

Then one day I was looking around on Amazon.com and the site was promoting kitchenware. I had some free time so clicked on the pictures just to see what kind of things are popular in the USA. After a few minutes of browsing, one brand of cookware caught my eye. It is a brand more famous for food processors, so I was curious about the pans.

Take a look at this site and you can see a selection of pans and also watch a video.

Before you decide you want one too, I have to tell you that you CANNOT buy them in Japan. Cusinart Japan doesn't sell this particular type of pan with ECO "hard anodized" coating. So why did I want THIS pan, and not one I can buy domestically? It's because the ECO pans are totally non-toxic even at high temperatures.

The pan itself was on sale for less than 5,000yen but shipping from the USA to Japan cost that much again. Was it worth it? YES! Great to cook with and the handle doesn't get hot at all - just like the video said. I highly recommend it. Now I just have to wait and see how many years I can use it :)