Blog
2012-04-25
If you like cooking like me, I think you MUST visit Kappa-bashi（合羽橋）during your stay in Tokyo.
Kappa-bashi is the street and there are so many shops which provides cooking and kitchen tools such as plates, paper thing, pot, knives, cookie templates, chopstics and so on, I love this place very much!
There is not only for the consumars but also professionals like chef or manager of restaurant it means sometimes you can find and get staffs cheaper than the other place. When I go to Kappa-bashi, usually I need more than three hours to take a look for all the shops I'm interested in because there are tons of nice goods for cooking lovers.
I have thought that I want to introduce this place to all the guest of Nagomi Kitchen, but I have always forgot to take pictures because I always concentlate to my own shopping :D
But few weeks ago, my boyfriend's mother and aunt visited us from Denmark and we took them to Kappa-bashi so finally now I can introduce you my favorite place with many pics!
Many kind of design of tiny plates, it called Mamezara in Japanese. The price is just around 100-300 yen.
Tea pot, price is about 1,000 yen. You can find many kind of green tea easily at the supermarket and just put them into this pot with hot water.
Cups, price from 500 yen to 1,000 yen.
Nambu Ironware, it's the Japanese traditional craft. Looks nice!
If you visit Takayama during your trip in Japan, maybe you can find this one at there when you served original dish at Takayama, "Hooba-Miso".
Steam cooker.
Kappa-bashi is also famous for the food sample.
I will show you something I got at Kappa-bashi.
Kappa-bashi is nearby Asakusa (about 10 minutes on foot) so you can schedule to visit this wonderful place at the same day as Asakusa. Good luck for your shopping!
2012-04-20
A few weeks ago some nice folks gave me fresh uni or sea urchin since they just came from the Tsukiji fish market. This was definitely a very lovely gesture but also very unexpected. Because honestly, the only time I actually cut an uni open was when I found a bunch somewhere in the beaches of Mexico I think. Since coming to Japan I’ve been spoiled with the affordable fresh but already prepared uni in the stores so I just never had to go through the whole preparation process. It would have been great to slice these suckers open on the spot and offer them a piece too but I seriously was not ready.
When I was finally ready for the challenge, I was too excited to wait for any of my kitchen savvy friends to respond to my dilemma that I decided to rely on YouTube. It has saved us from having to pay someone to install our built-in electric cooktop because a video tutorial showed us how to do it ourselves among other things so I thought it was the perfect solution. Sure enough there were a bunch of Japanese (and English which I found afterwards) videos on how to properly scoop out the uni.
Most of the videos tell similar instructions where you either use a knife or some other tool that will help crack open the uni and then you are to pull out the black seaweed that is covering the lovely orange jewels. But the one video I found later on said that you could actually eat that black seaweed separately so will have to try that next time.
So the lesson for today is, be like me and use YouTube to solve all your problems! Or at least all your Japanese food related problems because it's sometimes easier to understand than written recipes.
And yes of course, if it weren't for the lovely folks that gave me these uni in the first place, I wouldn't have had this yummy experience. Arigato very much and next time, I will be prepared for sure!
2012-04-10
I'm usually Alisa Sanada co-organizer for Nagomi Kitchen but last Sunday I was host to a lovely family from Montreal and a very enthusiastic traveler from Moscow. I made kawarasoba which is a dish we always love to make when we have guests visiting Japan.
This dish which literally means roof tile soba, is a Shimonoseki specialty. Although Shimonoseki is famous for blowfish worldwide, not many people actually end up visiting the area. Dishes such as takoyaki and okonomiyaki from the Kansai area are quite famous and if visitors have more time they might be exposed to dishes that are famous in Hokkaido or Okinawa, but everything else in between is usually a blur. Making kawarasoba is just my way of introducing at least one of the underrepresented areas in Japan.
If you happen to end up trying kawarasoba at a restaurant, this is what it would look like. Of course it looks pretty with the noodles actually on the roof tiles and it sure is good, but like the houtou noodles I ate nabe style a few weeks ago, it's great to eat these regional dishes at someone's home since it makes the dish more accessible. If you eat the kawarasoba with us, you can obviously tell that you can use an electric griddle instead of heating up a roof tile, and use normal buckwheat noodles or udon noodles as a substitute for the green tea noodles since they are sometimes difficult to find.
Try it out at home or come see us when you come to Japan!
Note: Nagomi Kitchen has changed to Nagomi Visit. See more information about our current program on our site.
2012-04-08
When you look at the Nagomi Kitchen site you might only see the two of us, Megumi Kusunoki and myself, Alisa Sanada, on the about us page, but we are actually supported by many amazing advisors. Among these wonderful advisors is Megumi Kusunoki’s mother. If you are a past participant in one of our cooking programs, then you might have met her. She’s the one with the camera snapping away making you feel like a superstar during our sessions. And if you are going to be participating in the near future, make sure to get all your Japanese food and Bali scuba diving questions ready because she sure knows a lot about both and is ready to share.
She is from Yamanashi Prefecture, most famous for Mount Fuji. However, in my eyes it’s the land of the yummy regional dish houtou. It's a flat udon noodle dish with vegetables in a miso soup broth that is normally eaten at a restaurant if you are not from the region. But of course the locals eat it at their homes and mmm-hmm it sure is delicious!
I had the pleasure to try her homemade houtou, which was my first one outside of a restaurant. What I liked about it most was the fact that we were eating it nabe hot pot style instead of each person with an individual bowl. It was great seeing the soup get thicker and thicker because you cook the noodles still covered with flour unlike other noodle dishes where you need to pre-cook using another pot. That combined with the broth that comes from the ingredients like chicken, kabocha pumpkin, onions, fried tofu, carrots, mushrooms, daikon radish and of course miso, mmm-hmm is all I can keep on saying! Even if you can’t get a hold of houtou noodles, at least try making it with udon noodles. You will understand how great miso is, and how it is not just for miso soup!
2012-04-06
3 guests joined our Kyaraben lesson yesterday and made a Picachu bento box.
Olivia and Dylan from Canada, it was their first day in Japan of their two weeks journey. And Rex from Hong Kong, it was the last day for his second trip to Japan. They have a big interesting to making Kyaraben. (Character bento.)
Olivia wondered that "Is threre any restaurant where people can eat Kyaraben in Japan?" The answer is no, but I think it's a very nice idea if people can eat Kyaraben at restaurant.
But now, Olivia, Dylan and Rex became a Kyaraben master so they don't have to go to Kyaraben restaurant!
"It's first time to having a lot of fun with food" said Olivia when she arranging her own Picachu on her bento box as final step. I was very glad to hear it.
Thank you Olivia, Dylan and Rex!
Note: we no longer conduct Nagomi Kitchen cooking classes but feel free to look for Nagomi Visit hosts who are interested in cooking with you by checking their profile pages. Nagomi Visits are not cooking classes but it will be an enjoyable experience like cooking with a friend.
2012-03-29
Last Sunday we had a very cool guest from the Canary Islands that requested that we do a kyaraben class where we make the Futurama character Nibbler instead of our usual characters. Apparently her nephew loves the character so she came to train with us so she could make the bento back home.
We used the same ingredients as the usual kyaraben we make in our classes but because the parts for Nibbler were more complex compared to our usual class, it was a bit more of a challenge.
However, our guest worked her magic and the end result was amazing! I’m honestly not sure if I could have the same patience she had when making the very small parts, especially for the eyes, but she did it!
Actually all during the session we had a tv crew taping on and off and at the end we had a short interview.
Megumi was interviewed too but it seemed like the camera was making everyone laugh instead of talk. But I guess that's okay.
If any of you would like to try something out for our kyaraben class, let us know and we will see what we can do. Just be ready for the challenge!
Note: we no longer conduct Nagomi Kitchen cooking classes but feel free to look for Nagomi Visit hosts who are interested in cooking with you by checking their profile pages. Nagomi Visits are not cooking classes but it will be an enjoyable experience like cooking with a friend.
2012-03-20
Last Sunday we had a past participant from our kyaraben class from December come back for our Japanese basic cooking class. What was great was that her Japanese husband came with her to participate in the program this time! Like our other expat participants, she told us that it’s the basic things that are part of a person’s daily routine like grocery shopping or cooking that are some of the most difficult obstacles to overcome when you first settle into a new country.
Having personally experienced trying to cook in various countries where I could not speak nor read the language, I can understand how it is difficult to adjust. During the lesson it was great to see her pause and reconfirm from time to time to make sure she was understanding and remembering everything.
Learning how to cook the dishes that are part of the Japanese basic cooking class is important but getting familiar with the ingredients is what really opens you up to new dishes so we really hope all our participants will not hesitate to ask us anything and everything. Not only will we do our best to give you the best answers and advice during the program but please always feel free to contact us afterwards. We are always here to help.
Note: we no longer conduct Nagomi Kitchen cooking classes but feel free to look for Nagomi Visit hosts who are interested in cooking with you by checking their profile pages. Nagomi Visits are not cooking classes but it will be an enjoyable experience like cooking with a friend.
2012-03-11
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 at first. Watching lots of cooking shows, searching the Internet, ravaging 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?
Note: we no longer conduct Nagomi Kitchen cooking classes but feel free to look for Nagomi Visit hosts who are interested in cooking with you by checking their profile pages. Nagomi Visits are not cooking classes but it will be an enjoyable experience like cooking with a friend.
2012-03-10
Before I started Nagomi Kitchen cooking lesson, I was thinking a lot about the lesson menus.
"What menu will be fun for tourist to experience Japanese cooking during their stay in Japan?"
"How can I provide the enjoyable cooking time to them?"
And when I was considering it, I believed that making kyaraben will be a one of fun thing for almost participant because I have enjoyed by myself very much.
(To be honest I have never cook kyaraben for a real lunchbox though but I knew taking photos of own creation was really exciting!)
So, I started kyaraben lesson from last year and many participants have already created their own kyaraben.
And few days ago, I received a request from guest who booked our kyaraben lesson for end of this month.
She want to create different kyaraben. Do you know it?
Actually it was first time for me to receive this kind of request, (in addition I have never seen this character before!) but I tried to make it.
How do you think about this kyaraben?
I will cook it together with guest on end of March, and will pass the recipe for it.
I love try to make new kyaraben, so if you want to make your favorite character with us, please let me know when you booking.
Of course I want to try but I guess there is some character which is completely impossible to create as kyaraben so I will inform you if I can do that or not after receiving a request!
Note: we no longer conduct Nagomi Kitchen cooking classes but feel free to look for Nagomi Visit hosts who are interested in cooking with you by checking their profile pages. Nagomi Visits are not cooking classes but it will be an enjoyable experience like cooking with a friend.
2012-03-09
When it comes to the topic of Japanese food with travelers, I know everyone loves to talk about the fermented soybean dish natto, since it is the quintessential weird food of Japan with it’s gooeyness and smelliness. But I am honestly tired of hearing Japanese people always asking non-Japanese travelers if they have tried natto during their travels in Japan and if they liked it or not. I mean doesn’t every Japanese person already know that even some Japanese people born and raised in Japan can dislike natto? And I get more annoyed when people go bonkers with disbelief when the traveler actually does like it. Seriously, I wish people would come up with other things to ask like have you tried shirako fish milt, because although it might sound disgusting it sure is terrific!
Well, that said, I never was much of a fan of natto while growing up as a Japanese-American in Texas. Although I still don’t go out of my way to buy natto at my local supermarket in Tokyo, that doesn’t mean I haven’t grown to like it. When I first tried good natto, it was when my Japanese aunt introduced me to natto made in Ibaraki prefecture. I’m still no expert at this point when it comes to natto specifics, but I could really tell the difference because the flavors from the soybean itself was stronger than the pungent smell you often hear about making the natto quite pleasant to eat.
The way you eat the natto might also change your perspective. Depending on how much more sliminess you can embrace, you can mix and match raw egg, yamaimo mountain yam, okra, green onions, cucumbers, dried seaweed, shiso leaves or even kimchi and cheese. Natto maki rolls are very common but you can also find natto omelets, tempura, and even pasta.
So for those who have already given up on natto on your first try, it might just be that you haven’t found your best match. There are so many different kinds of natto from different regions, brands, and well even the size of the natto will affect the taste. Your local supermarket might have a good selection but make sure to check out a nearby depachika (the basemet floor of a large department store) or other specialty food stores you may stumble upon while you wonder the streets of Japan. Hopefully you will finally find your best match.
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